PEIRCE'S VA. CO. PATENT REVOKED.

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Before they landed it was whispered by the discontented "that when they came ashore they could use their own liberties; for none had power to command them, the patente they had being for Virginia, and not for Newengland, which belonged to an other Goverment with which yo Virginia Company had nothing to doe." 1

The May-flower did not until May 6, 1621, return to England, and on the first of the next month John Peirce, citizen and cloth-worker of London, and associates, took a patent from the Council of New England. At a meeting of the Virginia Company on July 16, of the same year,

"It was moved, seeing that Mr. John Peirce had taken a patent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and thereupon seated his company within the limits of the Northern Plantations as by some was supposed, whereby, as by some was supposed, whereby he seemed to relinquish the benefit of the patent he took of this Company, that therefore the said patent might be called in, unless it might appear he would begin to plant within the limits of the Southern Colony."

It would appear from this, that before June 1, 1621, when the Council of New England gave a patent, Peirce had some kind of agreement with Gorges, as he had always been inclined, in view of the profit from fishing, to settle the Leyden people in the North Colony.

suitor to this Court, that he might be admitted a free brother of the Companie, and have some shares of land bestowed upon him."

He was captured by the Spaniards in 1612. Was hired by Daniel Gookin, owner of the Providence, to take that ship to Virginia, which arrived April 10, 1623, and soon after this he died in the colony.

1 Bradford, Mass. His. Coll., 4 S., vol. 3, p. 89.

CHAPTER IX.

SIR GEORGE YEARDLEY-FIRST AMERICAN LEGISLATURE.

EORGE YEARDLEY, a brother of Ralph Yeardley, a London apothecary, was a worthy, energetic man, who came to the colony in 1610, as one of Lord Delaware's captains. On the 5th of October, 1618, the news reached London of Delaware's death at sea, and soon after Yeardley, now in England, was made the successor of Argall. His appointment was noticed by Sir Philip Mainwaring in a letter to the Earl of Arundel, dated November 22, 1618:

"This morning the King knighted the new Governor of Virginia, Sir Edward [George] Yardley, who upon a long discourse with the Kinge doth proue very understandinge. Amongst many other things he tould the King that the people of that country doe beleeve the resurrection of the body and that when the body dyes the soule goes into certain faire pleasant feilds their to solace itself untill the end of the world, and then the soule is to retourne to the body againe and live both together happilly and perpetually. Hereupon the Kinge inferrd that the Gosple must have been heretofore knowne in that countrie though it be lost and this fragment only remaynes."

1 Nichols, III, 495; Lodge, Ill. British History, III, 293, 294.

JOHN PORY, SECRETARY.

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Not being connected with the wealthy, there was some disposition to sneer at his elevation. Sir Dudley Carleton received a letter, dated November 28th, with these words:

"Here be two or three ships ready for Virginia and one Capt. Yardley a mean fellow by way of provision goes as Governor and to grace him the more, the King knighted him this week at New Market, which hath set him up so high, that he flaunts it up and down the street in extraordinary bravery, with fourteen or fifteen liveries after him." 1

He sailed on the 19th of January, but owing to adverse weather it was the 19th of April, 1619, before he reached Jamestown. John Pory2 went out as secretary of the

1 Chamberlain in Nichols's Progresses of James, vol. III, p. 496.

2 John Pory was a graduate of Cambridge, a great traveler and good writer, but gained the reputation of being a chronic tippler, and literary vagabond and sponger. When young he excited the interest of Hakluyt who in a dedication to the third volume of his remarks: "Now because long since I did foresee that my profession of Diuinitie, the care of my family and other occasions might call and divert me from these kind of endeavours, I therefore have for these three yeers last past encouraged and furthered in these studies of Cosmographie and forren histories my very honest, industrious and learned friend Mr. John Pory, one of speciall skill and extraordinary hope to perform great matters in the same, and beneficial to the commonwealth." Pory in 1600 prepared a Geographical History of Africa, but he soon disappointed the expectations of friends.

A letter writer on August 11, 1612, says: "It is long since I heard of Master Pory, but now at last understand he lies lieger at Paris, maintained by the Lord Carew."

Sir Dudley Carleton wrote, on July 9, 1613, from Venice: "Master Pory is come to Turin with purpose to see those parts, but wants primum necessarium, and hath, therefore, conjured me with these words-by the

colony, who was a fine scholar, but addicted to intemperance. Argall was informed, by a swift sailer dispatched by his friends, that he was to be placed under arrest, and

kind and constant intelligence which passeth betwixt you and my best friends in England to send him fourteen doubloons, wherewith to disengage him, where he lies in pawn, not knowing how to go forward or backward. I have done more in respect of his friends than himself, for I fear he is fallen too much in love with the pot to be much esteemed, and have sent him what he wrote for by Matthew, the post."

A correspondent of Carleton wrote, on August 1 of the same year: "You had not need meet with many such poor moths as Master Pory, who must have both meat and money, for drink he will find out himself, if it be above ground, or no deeper than the cellar."

Sir Dudley Carleton, on August 22, 1617, writes from Hague to a friend: "If Mr. Pory have done with Constantinople, and can Star Saldo against the pot, which is hard in this country, he shall be welcome unto me, for I love an old acquaintance." After visiting Constantinople he was, for a brief period in 1617, an attaché of the English legation at the Hague, about the time of the residence there of the learned Puritan divine, Dr. William Ames, whose preaching the English Ambassador attended. In 1619 he was made secretary of the colony of Virginia, and after his recall, while returning to England, he stopped at the infant Plymouth settlement and had pleasant intercourse with Governor Bradford and Elder Brewster, with whom he may have been acquainted in Holland, and received from them some books, which he esteemed as "jewels," he says, in a note to Bradford dated August 28, 1622, and signed, "Your unfeigned and firm friend." See Bradford's New Plymouth.

"Our old acquaint

A letter from London, dated July 26, 1623, says: ance, Mr. Pory, is in poor case, and in prison at the Terceras, whither he was driven, by contrary winds, from the north coast of Virginia, where he had been upon some discovery, and upon his arrival he was arraigned and in danger to be hanged for a pirate."

In the fall of 1623 he was appointed by the King to go to Virginia and report the condition of the colony. He returned the next year, and died about 1635.

A COLLEGE PROJECTED.

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escaped before Yeardley came, and was in London early in May.

At the same time that Yeardley was appointed Governor, orders were given for the establishment of a university in Virginia, with a branch college for the education of Indian youth. Soon after Dale came back to England the King had ordered that collections should be taken up in each diocese of England, for the planting of a college in the colony. In their instructions, on November 18, 1618, the Company use these words: "Whereas, by a special grant and licence from his Majesty, a general contribution over this Realm hath been made for the building and planting of a college for the training up of the children of those Infidels in true Religion, moral virtue, and civility, and for other godlyness, We do therefore, according to a former Grant and order, hereby ratifie, confirm and ordain that a convenient place be chosen and set out for the planting of a University at the said Henrico in time to come, and that in the mean time preparation be there made for the building of the said College for the Children of the Infidels, according to such instructions as we shall deliver. And we will and ordain that ten thousand acres, partly of the lands they impaled, and partly of the land within the territory of the said Henrico, be alotted and set out for the endowing of the said University and College with convenient possessions."

A week after the date of this communication, a ripe scholar in England, the Rev. Thomas Lorkin, subsequently distinguished as secretary of the English embassy in

1 Manuscript instructions to Yeardley, Va. Records, small folio, in Library of Congress.