g the church. Its
length was sixty feet, and its breadth twenty-four, and it was to have a
chancel of cedar and a communion-table of black-walnut, and the pews of
cedar, with handsome wide windows, to shut and open according to the
weather, made of the same wood; as also a pulpit with a font hewed out
hollow like a canoe, with two bells at the west end. The building was so
constructed as to be very light within; and the Lord Governor and
Captain-General caused it to be kept passing sweet, and trimmed up with
divers flowers. There was also a sexton belonging to it. Every Sunday
there were two sermons delivered, and every Thursday one--there being
two preachers who took their weekly turns. In the morning of every day,
at the ringing of the bell at ten o'clock, the people attended prayers;
and also again at four in the afternoon, before supper. On Sunday, when
the Governor went to church, he was accompanied by the councillors,
officers, and all the gentlemen, with a guard of halberdiers in his
lordship's livery, handsome red cloaks, to the number of fifty on each
side, and behind him. In the church his lordship had his seat in the
choir, in a green velvet chair, with a cloth, and also a velvet cushion
laid on the table before him on which he knelt. The council and officers
sate on each side of him, and when he returned to his house he was
escorted back in the same manner. The newly appointed council consisted
of Sir Thomas Gates, whose title was changed from that of
Lieutenant-Governor to that of Lieutenant-General; Sir George Somers,
Admiral; Captain George Percy; Sir Ferdinando Wayman, Master of the
Ordnance; Captain Newport, Vice-Admiral; and Mr. Strachey, Secretary and
Recorder. Strachey, who appears to have been a scholar, published an
interesting account of the colony at this period. Some of the houses at
Jamestown were covered with boards; some with Indian mats. They were
comfortable, and securely protected from the savages by the forts. Lord
Delaware was a generous friend of the colony; but it was as yet quite
too poor and too much in its infancy to maintain the state suitable to
him and his splendid retinue. The fashions of a court were preposterous
in a wilderness. On the ninth of June, Sir George Somers was dispatched,
in compliance with his own suggestion, in his cedar vessel to the
Bermudas, accompanied by Argall in another vessel, to procure further
supplies for the colony. Captain Argall, in consequence of adv