Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/67

] tendency. King James, who had taken the alarm, was appealed to as arbiter by the minority, and, furnished with a pretext in the ill-success and presumed mismanagement of the Company's affairs, determined upon a summary method of reforming them after his own standard. Without legal right, by the exercise of his prerogative alone, he ordered the records of the Company in London to be taken possession of, and appointed a commission to sit in judgment upon its proceedings, while another body was sent to Virginia to inquire into the condition and management of the colony. The first inquiry brought, it was confessed, much mismanagement to light, upon which the king, by an order in council, declared his own intention to assume in future the appointment of the officers of the colony, and the supreme direction of its affairs. The directors were invited to accede to this arrangement, on pain of the forfeiture of their charter. Paralysed by the suddenness of this attack upon their privileges, they begged that they might be allowed time for consideration. An answer in three days' time was peremptorily insisted on. Thus menaced, they determined to stand upon their rights, and to surrender them only to force. Upon their decided refusal, a writ of Quo Warranto was issued by the king against the Company, in order that the validity of its charter might be tried in the court of King's Bench. Parliament having assembled, a last appeal was made; little sympathy, however, had that body for their exclusive privileges. At length the commissioners returned from Virginia with accumulated evidences of misgovernment, and an earnest recommendation to the monarch to recur to the original constitution of 1606, and to abrogate the democratic element which, it was asserted, had occasioned so much dissension and misrule. This afforded additional ground for a decision, which, as usual in that age, says Robertson, was u perfectly consonant to the wishes of the monarch. The charter was forfeited, the Company was dissolved, and all the rights and privileges conferred on it returned to the king, from whom they flowed." Thus fell the Virginia Company, in 1625, after spending nearly $700,000 in their efforts to establish the colony.

An agent was sent to England by the colonists praying that no change might take place in their acquired franchises and privileges; he, however, died on the passage. James continued Wyatt in office to exercise his authority on the precedent of the last five years, i. e., from the time that the Company established the Colonial Assembly. The king had further plans in view, but his death on the 27th of March, 1625, finally closed his career with all its good and all its evil.

