The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624

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From Weddell, A Memorial Volume of Virginia Historical Portraiture
Virginia, 1607-1624
Charles E. Hatch, Jr.
The University Press of Virginia Charlottesville
Tenth printing 1991
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA The University Press of Virginia / Charlottesville
The colonization of Virginia was a mammoth undertaking even though launched by a daring and courageous people in an expanding age. The meager knowledge already accumulated was at hand to draw on and England was not without preparation to push for its place in the sun. There was a growing navy, there was trained leadership, there was capital, there was organization and there were men ready to make the gamble for themselves and to the glory of God and for their country.
It remained for the Virginia Company of London, under its charter of April 10, 1606, to found the first permanent English settlement in America. This company, a commercial organization from its inception, assumed a national character, since its purpose was to deduce a colony. It was instrumental, under its charter provisions, in guaranteeing to the settlers in the New World the rights, freedoms, and privileges enjoyed by Englishmen at home as well as the enjoyment of their customary manner of living which they adapted to their new environment with the passage of years. Quite naturally the settlers brought with them their church and reverence for God, maintained trial by jury and their rights as free men, and soon were developing representative government at Jamestown.
The immediate and long-range reasons for the settlement were many and, perhaps, thoroughly mixed. Profit and exploitation of the country were expected, for, after all, this was a business enterprise. A permanent settlement was the objective. Support, financial and popular, came from a cross section of English life. It seems obvious from accounts and papers of the period that it was generally thought that Virginia was being settled for the glory of God, for the honor of the King, for the welfare of England, and for the advancement of the Company and its individual members.