Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/135

Rh an English Court could affect lands not within the jurisdiction of that court, petitioned King James for a new grant of Virginia to them. He accordingly executed a grant to Sir Thomas Gates and others, bearing date the 9th of March, 1607, under which, in the same year, a settlement was effected at James Town, and ever after maintained. Of this grant, however, no particular notice need be taken, as it was superseded by letters patent of the same King, of May 23, 1609, to the Earl of Salisbury and others, incorporating them by the name of “the Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the first Colony in Virginia,” granting to them and their successors all the lands in Virginia from Point Comfort along the sea coast to the northward 200 miles, and from the same point along the sea coast to the southward 200 miles, and all the space from this precinct on the sea coast up into the land. West and Northwest, from sea to sea, and the islands within one hundred miles of it, with all the commodities, jurisdictions, royalties, privileges, franchises and pre-eminences within the same, and thereto and thereabouts, by sea and land, appertaining, in as ample manner as had before been granted to any adventurer; to be held of the King and his successors, in common soccage, yielding one-fifth part of the gold and silver ore to be therein found, for all manner of services; establishing a council in England for the direction of the enterprise, the members of which were to be chosen and displaced by the voice of the majority of the company and adventurers, and were to have the nomination and revocation of governors, officers and ministers, which by them should be thought needful for the colony, the power of establishing laws, and forms of government, and magistracy, obligatory not only within the colony, but also on the seas in going, and coming to, and from it; authorizing them to carry thither any persons who should consent to go, freeing them forever from all taxes and impositions on any goods or merchandize on importation into the colony, or exportation out of it, except the five per cent. due for custom on all goods imported into the British dominions, according to