And both these companies prayed King James to grant
them permission to found colonies in Virginia. Virginia therefore
was divided into two parts; the right to found colonies in the
southern half being given to the London Company, the right to found
colonies in the northern half being given to the Plymouth Company
upon condition that the colonies founded must be one hundred miles
distant from each other.
These companies were formed by merchants. They were formed for
trade, and in the hope of making money, in spite of the fact that
up to this time no man had made money by trying to found colonies.
in America, but on the contrary many had lost fortunes.
Of the two companies now formed it was only the London Company
which really did anything. The Plymouth Company indeed sent out an
expedition which reached Virginia. But the colony was a failure,
and after a year of hardships the colonists set sail for England
taking home with them such doleful accounts of their sufferings
that none who heard them ever wished to help to found a colony.
The expedition of the London Company had a better fate. It was in
December, 1606, that the little fleet of three ships, the Susan
Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery, put out from England,
and turned westward towards the New World.
With the expedition sailed Captain John Smith. He was bronzed and
bearded like a Turk, a swaggering, longheaded lovable sort of man,
ambitious, too, and not given to submit his will to others.
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