Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 1.djvu/120

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VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

reached a seventh edition. Sandys and mem- bers of his family were connected with the X'irginia Company in the capacity of stock- holders during the whole of its existence. He was a friend of Southampton, v/ho, upon his resignation as treasurer of Virginia in 162 1, recommended his election to fill the vacant ofihoe. He was forthwith elected and later, on April of the same year, his election was confirmed. He shortly after went to the col- ony where there was granted him 1500 acres v.-ith fifty tenants for the maintenance of his rfiice. Shortly after his arrival, he received a rhymed letter from his friend, Michael Drayton, the poet, urging him to continue his poetic and literary efforts, but truly Virginia at the time seemed hardly a fit dwelling for (he muse. It was unable to raise enough food for its own subsistence and had to depend upon a disappointed and unwilling mother country. Education was also in a most rudi- mentary state, but in the autumn of 1621, iioo were subscribed by members of the ship's com- pany of the "Royal James," an East Indian- man, to be expended for a church or free school. The latter was erected accordingly V/ith a thousand acres for its maintenance and called the East India School after its donors. It was the first free school in the country. In the early part of the following year there was established, on account of the scattered popu- lation, which rendered it difficult for persons in the outlying districts to reach easily a court of law, a system of precinct courts, which afterwards took the form of county courts. It was in 1621 that the great dispute in England between King and commons began which threw the country into a ferment which led even- tually to civil war. It happened that many prominent members of the Virginia Company took sides in this dispute with the people so

that the ill will of the King became directed against the whole company to a degree most prejudicial to the colony. In addition to this the relations with the Indians were daily be- coming more strained, and altogether the period was a stormy one for the colony. The Indian trouble culminated in the dreadful massacre of March 22, 162^, an account of which Sandys sent home to England. He also took an active part in the operations which the English set on foot against the red neighbors for the purpose of revenge and chastisement. The reputation of the treasurer seems to have been unassailed. In none of the old records is there to be found an adverse criticism of him and he unquestionably enjoyed the re- spect of all. He spent some time in the colony but eventually returned to England, though the precise date is unknown, and was made a "Gentleman of the King's Privy Chamber." In 1636 he published a "Paraphrase upon the Psalms of David and upon the Hymns disper- sed throughout the Old and New Testaments." Sandys was a fruitful author and after his return published a considerable volume of work which met with the hearty approval of the critics and literateurs of the day. Among others, Pope declared in his notes to the "IHad" that "English poetry owed much of its present beauty" to Sandys' translations. He was very popular and enjoyed the friendship of the great authors of his time, and seems to have been noted as much for the sweetness of his' char- acter as for his scholarship. He spent the last years of his Hfe at Boxley Abbey in Kent, the home of Gov. Wyatt, whose wife was Sandys' niece. Here he died in March, 1643.

Faulett, Robert, came to Virginia in Janu- ary, 1 62 1, as preacher, physician and surgeon to the "adventurers" at Berkeley Hundred,