tendance varied according to the importance
of the business at hand, but as many as 150 might attend.

The quarter court meeting in Easter term was a court of elections,
where the members cast their votes for all principal officers by secret
ballot. Except for members of the council, all offices of the company
were held by annual election. The chief office was that of the
treasurer, as the governor of the company was still officially
designated. As frequently as not, in common usage he was known as the
governor, but the charters had fixed the title of his office and in so
doing had pointed up a primary responsibility of the office. The
governor of the Virginia Company was in fact its treasurer. After 1619
no man could hold the position for longer than three years, and no man
was eligible for election to it if already he was serving as the
governor of another company, except that he might also serve as the
governor of the Somers Island Company. The election court might vote a
reward for services rendered, but the treasurer, like other principal
officers, served without fixed compensation.

His chief assistant, and the second officer in rank, was the deputy. As
the title suggests, he might be deputized to perform virtually any
function of the governor, including that of presiding at courts in the
governor's absence. But he also had important functions of his own. He
is perhaps best described as the chief administrative officer of the
company. He was specifically charged with superintendence over all
lesser officers, and he had a primary responsibility for contracts and
other business arrangements relating to the dispatch of shipping,
provisions, and passengers to Virginia and to the receipt, storage, and
marketing of cargoes returned from the colony. At all times, he acted,
or was supposed to act, in accordance with instructions from the court,
council, or treasurer, but all such instructions were necessarily
general in character. Many were the opportunities to use his own
judgment, or to confer a favor, as he handled business transactions
involving hundreds or even thousands of pounds. For his assistance and
perhaps to keep a watch on him, he had a committee of sixteen men
chosen by the court under a provision requiring that a fourth of the
number should be changed each year "to the end [that] many be trained
up in the businesse." The committee may have been new, but the deputy's
office was old. It had been occupied for