ages, at "the taking up of Powhatan's bones" in 1621, formed a plot
for exterminating the English. Of this danger Yardley received some
information, and he promptly fortified the plantations, but
Opechancanough professed friendship. Under Sir Francis Wyatt for some
months everything went on quietly; but about the middle of March,
1622, a noted Indian chief, called Nemmattanow, or Jack o' the
Feather, slew a white man and was slain in retaliation. Wyatt was
alarmed, but Opechancanough assured him that "he held the peace so
firme that the sky should fall ere he dissolved it," so that the
settlers again "fed the Indians at their tables and lodged them in
their bedchambers."[20]

Then like lightning from a clear sky fell the massacre upon the
unsuspecting settlers. The blow was terrible to the colonists: the
Indians, besides killing many of the inhabitants, burned many houses
and destroyed a great quantity of stock. At first the settlers were
panic-stricken, but rage succeeded fear. They divided into squads, and
carried fire and sword into the Indian villages along the James and
the York. In a little while the success of the English was so complete
that they were able to give their time wholly to their crops and to
rebuilding their houses.[21]

To the company the blow was a fatal one, though it did not manifest
its results immediately. So far was the massacre from affecting the
confidence of the public in Southampton and his friends at the head of
the company that eight hundred good settlers went to Virginia during
the year 1622, and John Smith wrote, "Had I meanes I might have choice
of ten thousand that would gladly go."[22] But during the summer the
members of the company were entangled in a dispute, of which advantage
was taken by their enemies everywhere. At the suggestion of the crafty
earl of Middlesex, the lord high treasurer of England, they were
induced to apply to the king for a monopoly of the sale of tobacco in
England; and it was granted on two conditions--viz., that they should
pay the king L20,000 (supposed to be the value of a third of the total
crop of Virginia tobacco) and import at least forty thousand pounds
weight of Spanish tobacco. Though this last was a condition demanded
by the king doubtless to placate the Spanish court, with whom he was
negotiating for the marriage of his son Charles to the infanta, the
contract on the whole was displeasing to Count Gondomar, the Spanish
minister. He fomented d