"civilly and lovingly" with her husband.




XVI

STORY OF POCAHONTAS, CONTINUED

Sir Thomas Dale was on the whole the most efficient and discreet
Governor the colony had had. One element of his success was no doubt
the change in the charter of 1609. By the first charter everything
had been held in common by the company, and there had been no
division of property or allotment of land among the colonists. Under
the new regime land was held in severalty, and the spur of individual
interest began at once to improve the condition of the settlement.
The character of the colonists was also gradually improving. They
had not been of a sort to fulfill the earnest desire of the London
promoter's to spread vital piety in the New World. A zealous defense
of Virginia and Maryland, against "scandalous imputation," entitled
"Leah and Rachel; or, The Two Fruitful Sisters," by Mr. John Hammond,
London, 1656, considers the charges that Virginia "is an unhealthy
place, a nest of rogues, abandoned women, dissolut and rookery
persons; a place of intolerable labour, bad usage and hard diet"; and
admits that "at the first settling, and for many years after, it
deserved most of these aspersions, nor were they then aspersions but
truths.... There were jails supplied, youth seduced, infamous women
drilled in, the provision all brought out of England, and that
embezzled by the Trustees."