University of Virginia Library

VI.—PRIVATE PAPERS OF ADVENTURERS

While the company probably did not officially use the private correspondence
received from the colony by individual adventurers, it doubtless profited by the
information which it contained. Thus, the relation of John Rolfe,[70] addressed to
Lord Rich and the King in 1616, ranked in value with the descriptions of Ralph
Hamor, for it discussed the water supply of the colony, its food, clothing, houses, and
government and gave statistical information as to the various towns, their location,
the number of their inhabitants, and their officers. There are at least six other
letters extant, similar in character, though of less value.[71]

But another series of private papers partakes most strongly of the nature of
documents of the company. These are the contracts and correspondence relating

to individual adventures to Virginia or to groups of adventurers. They indicate
a tendency in the company to grant private monopolies and to encourage private
settlements—measures which indicate the growing importance of the undertaking
and the development of individual trade. Only one series of documents relating to
individual adventures is extant, those by which Lord Zouch's investment in Virginia
was secured to him. His contracts were made in May, 1618, with John Bargrave
and James Brett. There is also his warrant to John Fenner to pass to Virginia and
trade with the colony and the savages in his pinnace Silver Falcon, in February,
1618/19.[72]

The other series of documents, which illustrate the legal forms and methods of
the company, as also the way in which the first plantations were undertaken by
private means, concern Smythe's Hundred and Berkeley Hundred. Among the
Ferrar papers are the minutes of the meeting of the committee for Smythe's
Hundred on May 8, 1618,[73] the first record concerning the hundred, which provides
for the sending out and equipment of thirty-five men at an expense of £657 9s. 4d.