While Captain Smith was engaged in the life-and-death struggle for food with the Indian Emperor, Newport was arriving in England and unloading, along with his clapboards and soap-ashes, a large budget of news adverse to the President of the Virginia colony. Wingfield, Archer, Martin, Nelson, Ratcliffe, and Newport were willing contributors.

The "Governors and Councillors established for the Plantation of Virginia" were apprised of sundry errors which it was necessary to rectify, besides "outrages and follies" committed by the President of the Council of Virginia. The managers of the enterprise, "perceivinge that the plantation went backwards rather than forwards," held special meetings at the Earl of Exeter's house and elsewhere in London, and after consultation with Hakluyt, Hariot, and others, "of all the inconveniences in the three supplies (1606, 1607, 1608), and finding them to arise out of two rootes—the forme of government, and length and danger of the passage by the southerly course of the Indys, they determined to petition the King for a special charter,"[54] etc.

Accordingly a new charter was drawn up by Sir Edwin Sandys, then leader of the independent party in Parliament. The twenty-first article of this charter was, in view of future events, most significant. It inserted these words in italics: "and every of their children which shall happen to be born within any of their Limits ... shall have and enjoy all Liberties, Franchises and Immunities of free Denizens and natural subjects with any of our other Dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within this Realm of England or any other of our Dominions." To this chartered right—"the unalienable rights of freeborn Englishmen," our forefathers appealed when they protested against the royal form of government in America.

The special charter was promptly granted by James the First, but it had to go through a long routine before it could be signed and sealed by the King.

By the new charter, the limits of the colony were extended two hundred miles north and two hundred miles south of the mouth of James River; the western boundary, the undiscovered ocean. The members of the London Council were to be chosen by the Company, not appointed by the King; Virginia was to be ruled by a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and Admiral, who were empowered, in case of necessity, to declare martial law. These officers were now appointed: Sir Thomas, Lord Delaware, was to be Governor and Captain-General; Sir Thomas Gates, Lieutenant-Governor; Sir George Somers, Admiral. These were men of rank and high character. It was supposed that Wingfield, Ratcliffe, and Smith had been too obscure for their position. A fleet of nine vessels and five hundred settlers, men, women, and children, were to be sent out to do the work which the little trio, Susan Constant, Discovery, and Goodspeed, had undertaken when they dropped down the Thames in 1606.

By the provisions of the new charter the Virginia colony became indeed more independent and republican, but under the new system the Governor was endued with arbitrary power and authorized to declare martial law; and the condition of the colonists was infinitely worse than before. This they found to their bitter cost a few years later, when the hapless sojourners at Jamestown fled from their homes and hid among friendly Indians to escape the brutality of one of their governors. The sudden repeal of the old charter evinced a cold ingratitude for the services of Captain Smith and his associates, who had endured the toil, privations, and dangers of the first settlement. These "true men" were not consulted. They were utterly ignored, or branded as injurious to the interests of the plantation. They will always live in history, which honours their memory, as the real founders of this nation; while the motley multitude sent to supersede them perished and came to naught within a very few short months.[55]

Remembering the King's jealousy of his own honour and rights, one is naturally surprised at his prompt acquiescence in the new charter. Those around him knew him well. It was explained to his satisfaction that he was now relieved of embarrassment in his relations to the Spanish government; and that under the company's charter he could "owne it at his pleasure or disavowe it as might be best for his honour and service."

"If it take not success, it is done of ther owne heddes. It is but the attempt of private gentlemen: the State suffers noe losse, noe disreputation.

"If it takes success, they are your subjects, they doe it for your service, they will lay all at your Majesty's feet, and interess your Majesty therein."[56]

This suited James exactly. He had much to interest him at home without being bothered about colonial matters. He could always divide his time "between his inkstand, his bottle, and his hunting." If he had a mind for politics, there was plenty across the Channel, in the negotiations between the Hollanders, Spain, France, and last and least himself. The Hague Treaty was signed this year (March 29, 1609), and James, although distinctly snubbed by the Powers, regarded himself a mediator and peacemaker. Besides, he had much ado to maintain himself,—this heaven-descended pauper King,—a ruler of whom his subjects complained that his hands were always in their pockets, and if they did not look out he would keep them there. Often he could neither pay his servants nor decently supply his own table.

Early in March, the Virginia Council in London addressed a letter to the Mayor and Aldermen, beseeching them to take an active interest in Virginia, as "an action concerning God and the advancement of Religion, as well as the honour of the Kingdom." The Lord Mayor responded by sending copies of their letter to the several city companies, asking them to "make some adventure in so good and honourable an undertaking." The clergy of the Church of England now evinced the warmest interest in the movement. Sermons and tracts were written and sent broadcast throughout the country. Among the prominent bishops, deans, and reverends who earnestly pleaded for the conversion of the savages, we find our "Docteur of Divinitie," Rev. William Symondes.

The enthusiasm for Virginia caused by these efforts of the clergy, the change in the charter, and the news of the decay of the plantation are thus described by Strachey, in the elaborate style of the day:—

"Not a yeare of a romain-jubilee, noe, nor the Ethnick Queene of Ephesus, can be said to have bene followed with more heate and zeale; the discourse and visitation of it took up all meetings, times, termes, all degrees, all purses, and such throngs and concourse of personal undertakers, as the aire seemed not to have more Lights than that holie cause imflamed Spirits to partake with it." ZuÑiga was almost beside himself. He wrote to his King, entreating him in the most earnest manner to "give orders to have those insolent people in Virginia quickly annihilated."

On May 11 Edward Reed wrote from London to Mr. Coke of Wedgnocke: "The sickness increaseth. The Virginians go forward next week." The expedition of nine vessels, carrying men, provisions, and the plague, sailed from Plymouth toward the end of May, 1609.[57] Gates and Somers were each severally authorized, whichever might happen first to reach Jamestown, to supersede the existing administration until the arrival of Lord Delaware, who was not to embark for several months, and did not reach Virginia until more than a year after the fleet sailed. Newport, Gates, and Somers, finding it impossible to adjust the point of precedence among themselves, embarked together by way of compromise, in the same vessel, the Sea Venture. In the same ship John Rolfe and his first wife sailed (the second was Pocahontas), also George Sandys, Strachey the historian, and the Rev. Mr. Bucke; also Namontack and Matchumps (Machumps?), two of Powhatan's Indians who were, it appears, in England in May, 1609.

The fleet, contrary to directions, followed the old circuitous route, via the Canaries and West Indies, and, of course, as always, were "caught in the tail of a hurricane." Some of the vessels lost their masts, some their sails from the sea breaking over the ships. One small vessel was lost and never heard from again, and the Sea Venture, with Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Admiral, charter, and all, was separated from the other ships of the fleet. The other vessels, badly shattered by the storm, their stores spoiled with sea water, and many of their passengers dead or dying with the plague, arrived at Jamestown in August, 1609.

They brought back the early agitators, Martin, Archer, and Ratcliffe, together with "sundry other captains, divers gentlemen of good means and high birth, and about three hundred settlers; the greater part of them profligate youths, packed off from home to escape ill destinies, broken-down gentlemen, bankrupt tradesmen, and the like, decayed tapsters, and ostlers, trade-fallen; 'the cankers of a calm world and long peace.'"

Among the "youths"—we hope only a wild youth and not "profligate,"—was the Henry Spelman, son of Sir Henry Spelman, of literary fame, whom we remember as a fine fellow and good nurse. He came over in the Unity, and had a career of adventure second to none in the colony. He was rescued once from massacre by Pocahontas, was a valiant soldier and expert interpreter, and fell at last, in 1623, under the tomahawk of the Indian.

The story of the Sea Venture is a thrilling one. Who can read unmoved of Sir George Somers, the brave old Admiral, who scarce took leisure to eat or sleep day or night, but stood at the helm and kept his ship upright until she was jammed between the ledges of two rocks on one of the Bermudas! His crew had given themselves up as lost, and some having "comfortable waters" on board, drank themselves into oblivion after pumping vainly night and day. "Neither living or dying are we the better for being drunk," said the old Admiral.

They found themselves castaways on the "Isles of Devils," as the Bermudas had been named by the buccaneers who had visited them. This was the wreck which is said to have suggested Shakespeare's "Tempest." The author had evidently read Strachey's "True Repertory," and followed it in his descriptions of the "vexed Bermoothes": the cries of the mariners, the trembling star, flaming among the shrouds, which had appeared to the excited imagination of the weary and fasting Admiral at the helm. "On this strand at moonlight, the hag-born Caliban might roll and growl: Sycorax, the blue-eyed witch, might hover in the cloud wracks: and the voices of the winds whisper strange secrets."

The shipwrecked voyagers found an earthly paradise; and long afterward Andrew Marvel immortalized, in a lovely poem, the boat song of the exiles while they dreamed away the long months before they could reach the haven to which they were bound. May I, too, be allowed to dream awhile, pausing in my story of misery, cold, ingratitude, war, famine, and pestilence? Perhaps some of my readers may have forgotten the poem, and will forgive me for recalling part of it:—

The brave old Christian Admiral immediately set about the building of a cedar ship in which to return to his duty. From the wreck of the Sea Venture he brought a bell ashore, hung it on a tree, and rung it for morning and evening prayers and for Sunday services. There was one "merry English marriage" on the island and two births—a boy and a girl, to whom the names "Bermudas" and "Bermuda" were given. The latter was the daughter of John Rolfe. And here too was found the largest piece of ambergris in the then known world, weighing eighty pounds. Ambergris, so highly prized and so costly, was long "a beauty and a mystery" to its admirers. Was it the solidified foam of the sea or the tears of the mermaid? Science declares that the whale's intestines, irritated by starfish, evolves the gum.

They are an interesting party, these sea adventurers on the lovely island—these finders of treasure; but our stage is set on an island of a far different character, where the actors neither smile nor sing, nor build boats for escape, but are chained by inexorable fate to a hard lot. Our place in this story is with them.

And so we leave the grand old Admiral, settling his differences with the Lieutenant-Governor in the best way,—by dwelling apart from him on the island (each to build his own ship); and while they hew the fragrant cedar trees, and prepare for their return to Virginia, we will go thither and watch over the storm-rocked "Cradle of the Republic"—Jamestown.