CHAPTER V. THE "SEA ADVENTURE"

Experience is a great teacher. That London Company with Virginia to
colonize had now come to see how inadequate to the attempt were its means
and strength. Evidently it might be long before either gold mines or the
South Sea could be found. The company's ships were too slight and few;
colonists were going by the single handful when they should go by the
double. Something was at fault in the management of the enterprise. The
quarrels in Virginia were too constant, the disasters too frequent. More
money, more persons interested with purse and mind, a great company instead
of a small, a national cast to the enterprise these were imperative needs.
In the press of such demands the London Company passed away. In 1609 under
new letters patent was born the Virginia Company.

The members and shareholders in this corporation touch through and through
the body of England at that day. First names upon the roll come Robert
Cecil, Thomas Howard, Henry Wriothesley, William Herbert, Henry Clinton,
Richard Sackville, Thomas Cecil, Philip Herbert--Earls of Salisbury,
Suffolk, Southampton, Pembroke, Lincoln, Dorset, Exeter, and Montgomery.
Then follow a dozen peers, the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells, a hundred
knights, many gentlemen, one hundred and ten merchants, certain physicians
and clergymen, old soldiers of the Continental wars, sea-captains and
mariners, and a small host of the unclassified. In addition shares were
taken by fifty-six London guilds or industrial companies. Here are the
Companies of the Tallow and Wax Chandlers, the Armorers and Girdlers,
Cordwayners and Carpenters, Masons, Plumbers, Founders, Poulterers, Cooks,
Coopers, Tylers and Brick Layers, Bowyers and Vinters, Merchant Taylors,
Blacksmiths and Weavers, Mercers, Grocers, Turners, Gardeners, Dyers,