The select Parliamentary Committee of 1890.
In years gone by, when some of the companies sold their Irish estate, there was no question as to their power of alienation or their absolute right to the proceeds of the sale, but of late years a cry has been raised that the companies held their estates in a fiduciary capacity, and that they could not legally alienate their Irish property without accounting for the proceeds of the sale as public trustees. It had got abroad that those companies who had not already parted with their Irish estates—as the Haberdashers had done as far back as the year 1675, and the Merchant Taylors, the Goldsmiths and the Vintners, between the years 1728 and 1737—were meditating a sale. In response to the cry thus raised a select Parliamentary Committee was appointed to enquire "as to the Terms of the Charters or other Instruments[pg 045] by which their Estates in Ireland were granted to the Irish Society and to the London companies, and as to the Trusts and Obligations (if any) attaching to the Ownership of such Estates." Any trust or obligation in connection with the tenure of these estates would naturally be comprised within the four corners of the charters and instruments mentioned in the order of reference just cited, but these the committee practically ignored, on the ground that the task of pronouncing with decisive authority upon their legal construction could only be performed by a judicial tribunal.[134] We have it, however, on the authority of so sound a lawyer as the late Sir George Jessel, that the companies are ordinary owners of their Irish estates in fee simple, subject only to the reservations expressly contained in the conveyance to them.[135]
CHAPTER XX.
The plantation of Virginia, 1609.
Contemporaneously with the plantation of Ulster, another and more distant enterprise of somewhat similar character was being carried out in America; and to this, as to every great public undertaking, the citizens of London must need be called to lend their assistance. A company formed in 1606, and composed, in part at least, of London merchants, the object of which was the colonisation of Virginia, had proved a failure after a hopeless struggle for three years. It was therefore determined to reconstruct the company on a different basis and to make an entirely fresh start.
Application to the City for assistance.
In the spring of 1609 the company wrote to Sir Humphrey Weld,[136] then mayor of London, for assistance in financing the undertaking, urging him at the same time to diminish the risk of pestilence and famine in the city by removing the surplus population to Virginia. For the sake of convenience they purposed to issue no bills of adventure for less than £12 10s., but if his lordship were to make any "ceasement" (assessment) or raise subscriptions from[pg 047] the best disposed and most able of the companies, the council and company of the plantation would be willing to give bills of adventure to the masters and wardens for the general use and behoof of each company, or in the case of subscription by the wards to the alderman and deputy of each ward for the benefit of the ward. Should the emigrants "demaund what may be theire present mayntenaunce, what maye be theire future hopes?" they might be told that the company was for the present prepared to offer them "meate, drinke and clothing, with an howse, orchard and garden for the meanest family, and a possession of lands to them and their posterity." Any alderman of the city subscribing £50 would be reckoned as an original member of the council of the company, and take equal share of the profits with the rest; their deputies, too, would be admitted to the same privileges on payment of half that sum.
Contributions by the livery companies.