company, who
were interested in forming associations for the development of
"particular plantations." Late in the year he sailed for the colony as
the newly designated governor of Virginia. With him he carried
instructions which record for us further developments in the company's
land policy. All adventurers, including delinquents who would pay up
their subscription, were now promised 100 acres of land on the first
dividend for each share of stock, and another 100 acres as a second
dividend after the first had been occupied. Such of the ancient
planters as had paid their own way to Virginia, which was to say those
who had settled at their own cost before Dale's departure in 1616, were
also to receive grants in like amount. The adventurers were encouraged
to pool their rights for a common grant of land by the promise that
their estate could be developed under their own management and would be
treated as a separate administrative unit for civil and military
purposes. What the company had in mind were the larger associations
already formed or on the point of being formed, such as that for the
settlement of Southampton Hundred, which eventually embraced a nominal
area of perhaps as much as 100,000 acres and in which the associated
adventurers invested a total of some L6,000. Another example is the
association of Sir William Throckmorton, Sir George Yeardley, Richard
Berkeley, George Thorpe, and John Smyth of North Nibley which early in
1619 received a first joint grant of 4,500 acres and which founded
above Jamestown the plantation known as Berkeley Hundred. These new
associations were very much the same as the association of the Virginia
adventurers which in 1612 had undertaken the colonization of Bermuda.
For the development of their common grant they pooled the necessary
capital in their own joint-stock fund and directed its investment
through their own courts, assemblies, or committees as they saw fit.
For every tenant sent to the plantation, the associated adventurers
were entitled to an additional headright of 50 acres. They were awarded
also an additional 1,500 acres for the support of public charges in the
hundred, such as those incurred for the maintenance of a church and
minister.

How many of the colonists who migrated to Virginia between 1618 and
1624 went by agreement with such associations as these is difficult to
say, but there can be no doubt that they were a very large part of the
total. The Virginia Compa