CHAPTER VII.
English Discoveries and Settlements.—(Continued.)
ON the 10th of April, 1606, King James I. issued two patents to men of his kingdom, authorizing them to colonize all that portion of North America lying between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels of latitude. The immense tract extended from the mouth of Cape Fear River to Passamaquoddy Bay, and westward to the Pacific Ocean.
2. The first patent was to an association of nobles, gentlemen and merchants called the London Company; and the second to a similar body bearing the name of the Plymouth Company. To the former corporation was given the region between the thirty-fourth and the thirty-eighth degrees of latitude, and to the latter the tract from the forty-first to the forty-fifth degree. The belt of three degrees between the thirty-eighth and forty-first parallels was to be open to colonies of either company, but no settlement of one party was to be made within less than a hundred miles of the nearest settlement of the other.
The London Company.
3. The leading man in the London Company was Bartholomew Gosnold. His principal associates were Edward Wingfield, a rich merchant, Robert Hunt, a clergyman, and John Smith, an adventurer. The affairs of the company were to be administered by a Superior Council in England, and an Inferior Council in the colony. All legislative authority was vested in the king. A provision in the patent required the colony to hold all property in common for five years. The best law of the charter allowed the emigrants to retain in the New World all the rights of Englishmen.
The Plymouth Company.
4. In 1606 the Plymouth Company sent two ships to America, and in the summer of 1607 dispatched a colony of one hundred persons. A settlement was begun at the mouth of the Kennebec. The ships returned to England, leaving a colony of forty-five persons; but in the winter of 1607-8, some of the settlers were starved and some frozen; the storehouse was burned, and the remnant escaped to England.
