Sir Edwin Sandys held the office of treasurer of the company but for one year, being excluded from a re-election by the arbitrary interference of the king. The election was by ballot. The day for it having arrived, the company met, consisting of twenty peers of the realm, near one hundred knights, together with as many more of gallant officers and grave lawyers, and a large number of worthy citizens—an imposing array of rank, and wealth, and talents, and influence. Sir Edwin Sandys being first nominated as a candidate, a lord of the bedchamber and another courtier announced that it was the king's pleasure not to have Sir Edwin Sandys chosen; and because he was unwilling to infringe their right of election, he (the king) would nominate three persons, and permit the company to choose one of them. The company, nevertheless, voted to proceed to an election, as they had a right to do under the charter. Sir Edwin Sandys withdrew his name from nomination, and, at his suggestion it was finally agreed that the king's messengers should name two candidates, and the company one. Upon counting the ballots, it was ascertained that one of the royal candidates received only one vote, and the other only two. The Earl of Southampton received all the rest.

The Virginia Company was divided into two parties, the minority enjoying the favor of the king, and headed by the Earl of Warwick; the other, the liberal, or opposition, or reform party, headed by the Earl of Southampton. The Warwick faction were greatly embittered against Yeardley, and their virulence was increased by his having intercepted a packet from his own secretary, Pory, containing proofs of Argall's misconduct, to be used against him at his trial, which the secretary had been bribed by his friend, the Earl of Warwick, to convey to him. The mild and gentle Yeardley, overcome by these annoyances, at length requested leave to retire from the cares of office. His commission expired in November, 1621; but he continued in the colony, was a member of the council, and enjoyed the respect and esteem of the people. During his short administration, many new settlements were made on the James and York rivers; and the planters, being now supplied with wives and servants, began to be more content, and to take more pleasure in cultivating their lands. The brief interval of free trade with Holland had enlarged the demand for tobacco, and it was cultivated more extensively.

Sir George Yeardley's term of office having expired, the company's council, upon the recommendation of the Earl of Southampton, appointed Sir Francis Wyat governor, a young gentleman of Ireland, whose education, family, fortune, and integrity, well qualified him for the place. He arrived in October, 1621, with a fleet of nine sail, and brought over a new frame of government constituted by the company, and dated July the 24th, 1621, establishing a council of State and a general assembly—vesting the governor with a negative upon the acts of the assembly; this body to be convoked by him in general once a year, and to consist of the council of State and of two burgesses from every town, hundred, or plantation; the trial by jury secured; no act of the assembly to be valid unless ratified by the company in England; and, on the other hand, no order of the company to be obligatory upon the colony without the consent of the assembly. This last feature displays that spirit of constitutional freedom which then pervaded the Virginia Company. A commission bearing the same date with the new frame of government recognized Sir Francis Wyat as the first governor under it; and this famous ordinance became the model of every subsequent provincial form of government in the Anglo-American colonies.[150:A] Wyat brought with him also a body of instructions intended for the permanent guidance of the governor and council. He was to provide for the service of God in conformity with the Church of England as near as may be; to be obedient to the king, and to administer justice according to the laws of England; not to injure the natives, and to forget old quarrels now buried; to be industrious, and to suppress drunkenness, gaming, and excess in clothes; not to permit any but the council and heads of hundreds to wear gold in their clothes, or to wear silk, till they make it themselves; not to offend any foreign prince; to punish pirates; to build forts; to endeavor to convert the heathen; and each town to teach some of the Indian children fit for the college which was to be built; to cultivate corn, wine, and silk; to search for minerals, dyes, gums, and medicinal drugs, and to draw off the people from the excessive planting of tobacco; to take a census of the colony; to put 'prentices to trades and not let them forsake them for planting tobacco, or any such useless commodity; to build water-mills; to make salt, pitch, tar, soap, and ashes; to make oil of walnuts, and employ apothecaries in distilling lees of beer; to make small quantity of tobacco, and that very good.

Wyat, entering on the duties of his office on the eighteenth of November, dispatched Mr. Thorpe to renew the treaties of peace and friendship with Opechancanough, who was found apparently well affected and ready to confirm the pledges of harmony. A vessel from Ireland brought in eighty immigrants, who planted themselves at Newport's News. The company sent out during this year twenty-one vessels, navigated with upwards of four hundred sailors, and bringing over thirteen hundred men, women, and children. The aggregate number of settlers that arrived during 1621 and 1622 was three thousand five hundred.

With Sir Francis Wyat came over George Sandys, treasurer in Virginia, brother of Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer of the company in England. George Sandys, who was born in 1577, after passing some time at Oxford, in 1610, travelled over Europe to Turkey, and visited Palestine and Egypt. He published his travels, at Oxford, in 1615, and they were received with great favor. The first poetical production in Anglo-American literature was composed by him, while secretary of the colony; and in the midst of the confusion which followed the massacre of 1622,—"by that imperfect light which was snatched from the hours of night and repose,"—he translated the Metamorphoses of Ovid and the First Book of Virgil's Æneid, which was published in 1626, and dedicated to King Charles the First. He also published several other works, and enjoyed the favor of the literary men of the day. Dryden pronounced Sandys the best versifier of his age. Pope declared that English poetry owed much of its beauty to his translations; and Montgomery, the poet, renders his meed of praise to the beauty of the Psalms translated by him. Having lived chiefly in retirement, he died in 1643, at the house of Sir Francis Wyat, in Bexley, Kent. A fine copy of the translation of Ovid and Virgil, printed in 1632, in folio, elegantly illustrated, once the property of the Duke of Sussex, is now in the library of Mr. Grigsby. Mr. Thomas H. Wynne, of Richmond, also has a copy of this rare work.

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