officials, with Sir Edwin as director
at a salary of L500. At one Virginia court, meeting early in December,
the debate got so out of hand that it required several additional
sessions to straighten out the minutes in order that appropriate
penalties might be imposed upon Mr. Samuel Wrote, a member of the
Virginia council whose unrestrained charges of graft violated the
company's rules and offended the court's sense of its own dignity. In
the end the opposition elected to make the final test in a Bermuda
court, whose consent was necessary to close the contract and where
Sandys' opponents included the more substantial investors in that
colony. The test came in February 1623, and Sandys won. But it could be
demonstrated that had the vote been by share rather than by head, as
was the rule in both companies, he would have been defeated. Sandys'
opponents in the Bermuda Company all along had complained of a plan to
distribute the charges of the contract equally between the two
companies, arguing that the Virginia tobacco had a greater value and
should therefore carry a proportionately larger charge. And now they
were in a position to argue that the Virginia Company, in whose courts
for some time they had steadfastly refused even to vote on the salary
question, sought to exploit the younger plantation, as was evidenced by
the opposition of the adventurers to whom Bermuda's tobacco chiefly
belonged. With this argument, Sandys' opponents promptly carried the
whole question before the privy council.

This was in the spring of 1623. During the course of the preceding
debate, news had come of an Indian massacre in Virginia that had cost
the lives of over 350 colonists. The faction-ridden and bankrupt
company had stirred itself to send such aid as it could, but now came
the word that this had not been enough. By the testimony of Sandys' own
brother, though this testimony may not have been immediately available
to his enemies, another 500 colonists had died before the year was out
as a result of the dislocations occasioned by the massacre, and as a
result of the failure of the company to send enough aid. The tobacco
contract dropped into a position of secondary importance as Sandys'
opponents, with Alderman Johnson taking the lead, petitioned the king
for a full investigation of the situation in Virginia and of the recent
conduct of its affairs.

Whatever one may think of Sir Edwin Sandys, or of the motives which
inspired his oppo