estion that naturally arises is that of how, or why, Sir Edwin was
able to survive this challenge to his leadership. The news from
Virginia was by no means encouraging. Given the long record of
disappointment there, and the many men who previously had died there,
the fact that several hundred of the most recent settlers had succumbed
might have been expected to unsettle any administration. Perhaps it was
the king's interference, serving as it did to rally the adventurers in
defence of the company's liberty. Perhaps Sir Thomas was guilty of too
naked a display of his power, with the result that the lesser
adventurers, who already had been taught to view the great merchants of
the company with suspicion, rallied to the support of Sandys. Perhaps
it was because the Earl of Warwick and Sir Thomas had not learned yet
the need for effective teamwork; both men disliked Sandys, but they had
their own quarrels and they would not form a real coalition against him
for another two years. All these possibilities must be given
consideration, but there would seem to be still another reason,
possibly the most important of all.

Sir Edwin Sandys was a man of remarkable gifts, and nowhere are these
gifts better demonstrated than in his ability to stimulate the highest
hopes for Virginia. Before him only Richard Hakluyt, a patriot now dead
four years, had managed better to depict the promise America held for
Englishmen. Sandys wrote no major work on the subject, and even the
company's promotional pamphlets, which he undoubtedly shaped in some
large part, lacked the fire that Hakluyt, or even Alderman Johnson,
could impart to that branch of literature. It must be said also that
Sandys added no new idea to those which for a generation past had
guided Englishmen in their American ventures. His program included not
a single objective that the Virginia Company had not theretofore tried
to realize; the chief contrast with former programs was the absence of
any emphasis on the prospect that a route to the South Seas might be
found, an objective the adventurers had dropped for all practical
purposes a good many years before Sandys became their treasurer. But
Sandys had confidence, a systematic and orderly mind, and a persuasive
way of talking in the quarter court or in conference with the
individual adventurer who contemplated some new risk of capital. As a
result, he managed to convey the impression that plans had now been so
well thought throug