The men who came to Jamestown brought the ideals and ways of life of the mother country; its common law, the enactments of Parliament, the Church of their people; and as shown in the prayer written in England which the commanding officer of the colony was required to use daily at the setting of the watch, they hoped also that the natives of the land might be brought into the Kingdom of God. They made petition for their own needs, but they prayed also:

It is of real significance that the London Company made its first settlement a parish after the manner of the Church of England, and elected as its first rector the Reverend Richard Hakluyt, one of the most noted clergymen in England, and a man who had captured the imagination of all with his books on travel in far lands. He was expected to remain in England and represent the needs of the colonists and help, perhaps, to select clergymen to go to new parishes which would be formed as settlements developed. The religious aspect of the movement was approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he approved also the selection of the Reverend Robert Hunt who came to Jamestown as the vicar of the parish and the pastor of the colonists.

The London Company made a provision that each new settlement should become a parish with its own rector. The first settlements were established by the Company itself and were called "Cities" after the ideal and pattern of Geneva. That city, the home of John Calvin and of the Calvinistic theology which so strongly influenced the Church of England in the Seventeenth Century, was a self-governing unit in the Swiss Confederation. It consisted of the city and its suburban territory and was the prototype from which the "City" or "Hundred" in Virginia and the "Township" or "town" in Massachusetts were formed.

There were four Cities in Virginia: James City, Charles City, The City of Henrico, and Elizabeth City. They were boroughs at the time of the first meeting of the General Assembly of Virginia in 1619, each one electing its own Burgesses. And as counties now, instead of cities, each one elects its own Delegates to the Assembly. There were four "cities," three "hundreds," and four "plantations" represented by Burgesses in the first Assembly in 1619, and each one was a separate parish. Official records have long been lost but the names are known of some six clergymen who were incumbents of parishes in Virginia between 1607 and 1619.

The London Company had a rule that every clergyman who volunteered or was invited to go to a parish in Virginia was to be investigated as to character and fitness, and each one of them was taken by a committee to a church to read the service and preach a sermon as part of the investigation.

It is not generally known, perhaps, but plans for the immediate development of the life of the colonists included the establishment of a university which would set aside one hall or college for the education of Indian youth and another for the education of sons of English families. The London Company in 1618 made a grant of ten thousand acres of land on the north side of the James River and immediately to the east of the present-day City of Richmond. That grant was to be the seat of the University and was to be developed as a group of tenant farms with the college buildings in the center. So great was the interest throughout England in the plan that the King as the temporal head of the Church presented the matter to the whole people of England. In 1617 he wrote the Archbishops of Canterbury and York:

Under instructions from the King offerings were to be taken in every parish four times a year for two years, the money collected to be sent to the bishops and by them forwarded to the treasurer of the London Company. The treasurer reported later that more than fifteen hundred pounds sterling had been sent to him, and later he reported additional amounts. In that period three bequests aggregating more than a thousand pounds sterling were reported for the Christianizing of the Indians. Other gifts included a "communion cup with cover and a plate of silver guilt for the bread" with communion silk and linen cloths and other ornaments, all to be placed within a church for Indians to be built under another bequest. This communion chalice and paten are owned today by one of the oldest parishes in Virginia, and are in St. John's Church, of Elizabeth City Parish, at Hampton.

On one of the ships sailing from England to the East Indies an appeal was made by the chaplain in behalf of the university in Virginia and gifts were made in such large amount that when they were sent to Virginia they sufficed for the erection of "a publique free schoole" to be connected with the university. They named it "The East India School." The General Assembly, when it first met in July 1619, adopted a resolution urging English families to take promising Indian youths into their homes to teach them the fundamentals and prepare them for the opening of the college.

The work of establishing the university was already proceeding; land was being cleared; farm houses were being erected; more than one hundred artisans and workmen had been sent from England and the college buildings were under construction when on Good Friday, March 22, 1621/22, the great Indian massacre occurred. A full third of all the English people in Virginia were killed by Indians in one fatal day. The buildings at the university were burned to the ground, and every English man, woman and child in every family of the artisans and workmen was killed. The East India School was burned to the ground. Indeed the only thing that saved the colony from utter extermination was that Chanco, an Indian who had become a Christian, had learned of the plot the night before the massacre and warned the Englishman, Richard Pace, with whom he lived. Pace crossed the James River and warned the residents of Jamestown. So it was that Jamestown and some of the adjoining settlements were warned in time to protect themselves.

The massacre was of course a terrific catastrophe to the whole colony. Outlying settlements had to be abandoned and the colony was engaged in war with the Indians for several years. Then a second catastrophe occurred. King James became dissatisfied with the independent attitude of the London Company and personally secured its dissolution in 1624. He then took control of Virginia as a Royal Colony and he himself appointed the Governor and Council of the colony.

This ended all plans for the opening of the university. The King died in the following year and his son, King Charles I, was not interested in a university in Virginia. Nor was he or anyone else interested in sending ministers to the colonial parishes.

The London Company, with a membership including representatives of the Church and the universities, and of business interests and the higher social classes, had the confidence of the people. The King did not. He had their loyalty as their sovereign, but the spiritual and cultural welfare of a colony overseas carried little weight amid the political cross-currents and the self-seeking of a royal court.