ploration to the New England coast. Pring was absent eight
months, and returned with an account of the country fully confirming
Gosnold's good report. Two years later, in 1605, the earl of
Southampton and his brother-in-law, Lord Thomas Arundell, sent out
Captain George Weymouth, who visited the Kennebec and brought back
information even more encouraging.[2]

Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth died March 24, 1603, and was succeeded by
King James I. In November Raleigh was convicted of high-treason and
his monopoly of American colonization was abrogated. By the peace
ratified by the king of Spain June 15, 1605, about a month before
Weymouth's return, the seas were made more secure for English voyages,
although neither power conceded the territorial claims of the
other.[3]

Owing to these changed conditions and the favorable reports of
Gosnold, Pring, and Weymouth, extensive plans for colonization were
considered in England. Since the experiment of private colonization
had failed, the new work was undertaken by joint-stock companies, for
which the East India Company, chartered in 1600, with the eminent
merchant Sir Thomas Smith at its head, afforded a model. Not much is
known of the beginnings of the movement, but it matured speedily, and
the popularity of the comedy of _Eastward Ho!_ written by Chapman and
Marston and published in the fall of 1605, reflected upon the stage
the interest felt in Virginia. The Spanish ambassador Zuniga became
alarmed, and, going to Lord Chief-Justice Sir John Popham, protested
against the preparations then making as an encroachment upon Spanish
territory and a violation of the treaty of peace. Popham, with true
diplomatic disregard of truth, evaded the issue, and assured Zuniga
that the only object of the scheme was to clear England of "thieves
and traitors" and get them "drowned in the sea."[4]

A month later, April 10, 1606, a charter was obtained from King James
for the incorporation of two companies, one consisting of "certain
knights, gentlemen, merchants" in and about London, and the other of
"sundry knights, gentlemen, merchants" in and about Plymouth. The
chief patron of the London Company was Sir Robert Cecil, the secretary
of state; and the chief patron of the Plymouth Company was Sir John
Popham, chief-justice of the Queen's Bench, who presided at the trial
of Raleigh in 1603.

The charter claimed for England all the North American continent
between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth