MANUSCRIPTS IN THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
The New York Public Library is next in importance to the Library of Congress
in manuscript material on the Virginia Company and second only to the John Carter
Brown Library of Providence, Rhode Island, in publications. In the Lenox branch
of the New York Library is to be found a unique set of documents relating to the
settlement of Berkeley Hundred in 1619, known as the Smyth of Nibley papers
which "are from the collection of Virginia manuscripts originally brought together
by John Smyth (or Smith) of Nibley, the historian of the Berkeleys, who was born
in 1567 and died in 1641. The collection comprises over sixty papers, original and
contemporary transcripts, relating to the settlement of Virginia between 1613 and
1634. After passing into the hands of John Smyth the younger, and more recently
into the Cholmondeley collection at Condover Hall, Shropshire, the manuscripts
were offered for sale in January, 1888, by Mr. Bernard Quaritch, from whom
they were lately bought and given to the New York Public Library by Mr. Alex-
ander Maitland."[125]
With the exception of the manuscripts in the Ferrar collection
relating to Smythe's Hundred, these form the only extant records of the important
movement for private plantations in Virginia under the régime of the company.
Two other valuable documents are now in the possession of the Lenox Library,[126]
the
holographic letter of John Pory, secretary of the colony, dated September 30, 1619,
and Commissioner John Harvey's declaration of the State of Virginia in 1624.
