University of Virginia Library

Preface

The records of the Virginia Company during the first three months of the years
from January, 1622/23 to January, 1624/25, picture the final attempts to regulate
and develop the tobacco trade with Virginia. Then follow papers revealing the
bitter attack upon the Earl of Southampton and the adventurers associated with
him, by Sir Nathaniel Rich and the defenders of Sir Thomas Smith's regime.
Throughout the whole period are portrayed the struggle of the plantation to recover
from the Indian massacre of March 22, 1622, and the efforts made by the
officials in London and by the Governor, Council, and Assembly in Virginia.

The most important and perhaps unique document of the entire series published
in volumes III and IV of the Records of the Virginia Company is the Records of Pro-
ceedings upon Information of Quo Warranto in the Court of King's Bench, found by
the editor in the Public Record Office, London. It, alone, covers one hundred pages
of volume IV. The largest number of documents come from the Manuscript
Records of the Virginia Company, Volume III. Like volumes I and II, comprising
the minutes of the London company, it is deposited in the Library of Congress,
Washington, District of Columbia. In it are spread the official papers of the
Governor, Council and Assembly of Virginia. They include letters to and from
the officers of the Virginia Company of London, commissions issued, orders declared,
petitions granted, warrants for elections, statements of the condition of the colony
and other documents revealing the history of the plantation.

A long series of papers shedding much light on the terrific conflict within the
Company, resulting in its dissolution by Quo Warranto proceedings, comes from
the Manchester Papers, now in the Public Record Office, London, being largely
letters and memoranda of Sir Nathaniel Rich.

The Colonial Office Papers in the Public Record Office, the Ferrar Papers, and
the Papers of Lord Sackville, now deposited at Knole Park, Kent, each supplied a
number of important documents.

In this volume, then, is to be found the record of the dissension within the
company that brought about the close of the corporation and the end of the first
period of the colony's history. At the same time the beginning of Virginia as a
crown colony is set forth. Here also is portrayed the settled life of the plantation.
Much is told of the colonists and their efforts to create an organized and systematic
government, to produce commodities that would provide the necessities for living,
and to develop resources that might result in needful trade with the Indians and
with England.

Two documents of importance, inadvertently omitted at first, but now numbered
CCCXLV A and CDXXXVII A, will be found, not in their chronological place,
but at the end of the volume, as Addenda.

The editor wishes to make acknowledgment to Dr. Hubert Hall for his labors
in supervising the transcript of the Quo Warranto Proceedings and in translating
the entire document.

As in the previous volume, the editor is deeply indebted to Professor J. Franklin
Jameson for his continued care in seeing the document through the press; to Marian
Carter Anderson for her assistance in preparing the manuscript for the press and in
the difficulties of reading the proof. Helen Kingsbury Zirkle has prepared the
index for this volume as she did for Volume III, and to her again the editor wishes
to express appreciation of her contribution.

A part of the expense of arranging the manuscript, reading the proof, and
making the index was met by a grant from the Social Science Research Council.