Page:The records of the Virginia company of London - Volume 1.djvu/21



The individual effort which had revealed itself at the close of the medieval period in other phases of the economic development and in the military history of the past quarter century was especially prominent in the movement in 1606 for a society of adventurers to trade in Virginia. The commercial advance had been due chiefly to private enterprise, and the naval expeditions into the West Indies against the Spanish had heen fitted out and prosecuted by such adventurous spirits as Sir Francis Drake, while the zeal for exploration and for gold, which inspired John and Sebastian Cabot to search for a passage to Cathay and the East Indies in 191. led Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh a century later to seek out the resources of the lands from Florida to Newfoundland. It is the same spirit of adventure which inspired the narratives of John Smith and Henry Spelman as they told of their relations with the Indians of America. But it is in the progress of both the commercial and the political life of England that the Virginia Company is important. For the plantation founded and nourished by a private concern as an enterprise purely for gain was the social cause from which developed the colony as a form of government. Its political organization is seen in its relations to the Crown, of which there were two distinct phases. During the first three years it was distinctly a creature of the King, the affairs of which were conducted by the King through a council created by himself and responsible to himself. while to the investors were left the privileges of raising the funds, furnishing the supplies, and sending out the expeditions. It was a modification of this form of management to which the government reverted after the dissolution of the Company in 1624, and again at the end of the century when royal colonies were substituted for proprietary and corporate forms throughout America. In the second phase the undertakers became distinctly proprictary, retaining the commercial responsibilities. but assuming governmental functions in place of the King.

A comparison between the royal grants for discovery in the sixteenth century and those of the Virginia Company shows that there was an increase in the direct territorial relations between King and subject, a limitation upon monopoly 11