lus population as part of a greater England was a real
solution, and a better one than would be the raising of grain and
foodstuff by foreign countries to feed the hungry of Great Britain.
That men were thinking along this line appears from the action of
certain large towns in paying the expense of the voyage of young people
by the score or hundred to Virginia, and from the plan soon after the
first settlement, whereby young women of reputable families were sent
to Virginia to become wives of the colonists.

And still another motive was the religious one. The Virginia Company
kept constantly in the forefront their plan to Christianize the
Indians. Their plan as they began to put it into effect included the
establishment of parishes and the selection of fit clergymen to go
overseas; to establish a University with a college therein for Indians,
and to take Indian youths into English families to fit and prepare them
for their college. They secured from both King and Archbishop the
authority and permission to bring the expatriated Pilgrim Fathers back
under the English flag, and give them a settlement in Virginia, a plan
which failed after the Pilgrims had started for their promised new
home.

CHAPTER ONE

Beginnings

The men who came to Jamestown brought the ideals and ways of life of
the mother country; its common law, the enactments of Parliament, the
Church of their people; and as shown in the prayer written in England
which the commanding officer of the colony was required to use daily at
the setting of the watch, they hoped also that the natives of the land
might be brought into the Kingdom of God. They made petition for their
own needs, but they prayed also:

And seeing, Lord, the highest end of our plantation here is
to set up the standard and display the banner of Jesus
Christ, even here where Satan's throne is, Lord let our
labour be blessed in labouring the conversion of the
heathen; and because thou usest not to work such mighty
works by unholy means, Lord sanctifie our spirits and give
us holy hearts that so we may be thy instruments in this
most glorious work.

It is of real significance that the London Company made its first
settlement a parish after the manner of the Church of England, and
elected as its first rector the Reverend Richard Hakluyt, one of the
most noted clergymen in England, and a man who had captured the
imagination of all with his book