against the preparations then making as an encroachment upon Spanish
territory and a violation of the treaty of peace. Popham, with true
diplomatic disregard of truth, evaded the issue, and assured Zuñiga
that the only object of the scheme was to clear England of "thieves
and traitors" and get them "drowned in the sea."[4]

A month later, April 10, 1606, a charter was obtained from King James
for the incorporation of two companies, one consisting of "certain
knights, gentlemen, merchants" in and about London, and the other of
"sundry knights, gentlemen, merchants" in and about Plymouth. The
chief patron of the London Company was Sir Robert Cecil, the secretary
of state; and the chief patron of the Plymouth Company was Sir John
Popham, chief-justice of the Queen's Bench, who presided at the trial
of Raleigh in 1603.

The charter claimed for England all the North American continent
between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth degrees north latitude, but
gave to each company only a tract fronting one hundred miles on the
sea and extending one hundred miles inland. The London Company was
authorized to locate a plantation called the First Colony in some fit
and convenient place between thirty-four and forty-one degrees, and
the Plymouth Company a Second Colony somewhere between thirty-eight
and forty-five degrees, but neither was to plant within one hundred
miles of the other.

The charter contained "not one ray of popular rights," and neither the
company nor the colonists had any share in the government. The company
must financier the enterprise, but could receive only such rewards as
those intrusted with the management by the home government could win
for them in directing trade, opening mines, and disposing of lands. As