Page:The records of the Virginia company of London - Volume 1.djvu/22

12 of trade, and a tendency on the part of the Crown to retain directly or indirectly the powers of government. Thus, in the letters patent to Richard Warde, Thomas Ashehurst, and associates in 1501, to Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1578, and to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584, the Crown conferred proprietorship of land with the right to grant it out in fee simple at will. But in 1606 the land was held by the undertakers, and again in 1609 by the adventurers and planters in free and common socage, as of the manor of Greenwich of the county of Kent. Under the tirst Virginia charter it was granted by the King to those approved by the council: under the second, by the members of the company to anyone who should have adyentured a eertain sum of money or his person. The fief, distinctly so called in the early charters, for which homage was to be rendered, with no service, however, save that of one-fifth of the gold and silver gained. had disappeared; and the only direct feudal relation with the King which remained arose from the requirement of a per cent of the precious metals. The monopoly of trade by which Warde, Gilbert, and Raleigh were allowed to seize and detain any one who traflicked within two hundred leagues of a settlement was altered in 1606 so that the planters had only the right of collecting a tax from such interlopers. The rights of government which had been surrendered absolutely to the grantees in the sixteenth century charters were reserved to the King by the letters patent of 1606 to be exercised through the couneil. In 1609 these powers were conferred on the company as an open body, it must he remembered, and thus differed from the earlier grants and from the later proprietary grants to Lord Baltimore or to William Penn.

Although the charter emphasizes the government of the plantation, the Virginia Company was purely a commercial enterprise conducted by a private concern, even before the charter of 1609, as is shown by the history of its early years. It was backed by the patronage of the King, but only for the purpose of advancing the trade of the Kingdom in foreign parts and saving the Crown from expense and responsibility, as had been the policy in regard to the other trading companies. Nevertheless, it was a step toward colonial expansion, for, as has well been said, "the explorer is potentially a colonizer," and the army of laborers on the plantation became in time an army of free tenants in a colony. While in the spirit of its commercial life the company was Closely allied to the efforts fer exploration and search for gold, morally supported by Elizabeth in her feudal grants, in its organization, as well as in its purpose, it resembled the private companics for trade based on ancient charters, and in its development is to be understood only through a knowledge of both of these earlier movements.