led their plantations with vagabonds and
criminals. Those that were intrusted with the selection of settlers
were given explicit instructions to accept none but honest and
industrious persons. When it was found that these precautions were not
entirely effective, still stricter measures were adopted. It was
ordered by the Company in 1622 that before sailing for Virginia each
emigrant should give evidence of good character and should register
his age, country, profession and kindred.[140] So solicitous were they
in regard to this matter that when, in 1619, James I ordered them to
transport to Virginia a number of malefactors whose care was
burdensome to the state, they showed such a reluctance to obey that
they incurred the king's displeasure.[141]

What tended strongly to attract a desirable class of men in the
earliest years of the colony was the repeated attempt to establish
manufactures. Until the charter of the London Company was revoked,
that body never ceased to send over numbers of skilled artisans and
mechanics. In 1619, one hundred and fifty workmen from Warwickshire
and Stafford were employed to set up iron works on the James.[142]
Repeated attempts were made to foster the silk industry, and on more
than one occasion men practiced in the culture of the silk worm came
to Virginia.[143] An effort was made to start the manufacture of
glass,[144] while pipe staves and clapboards were produced in
considerable quantities.[145] Moreover, numerous tradesmen of all
kinds were sent to the colony. Among the settlers of this period were
smiths, carpenters, bricklayers, turners, potters and husbandmen.[146]
With the year 1624 there came a change for the worse in the
immigration, for the lack of the Company's paternal care over the
infant colony was keenly felt after the king undertook personally the
direction of affairs. James I and, after his death, Charles I were
desirous that Virginia should undertake various forms of manufacture,
and frequently gave directions to the governors to foster industrial
pursuits among the settlers, for they considered it a matter of
reproach that the people should devote themselves almost exclusively
to the cultivation of tobacco, but neither monarch was interested
enough in the matter to send over mechanics and artisans as the
Company had done, and we find after 1624 few men of that type among
the newcomers.[147] The immigration that occurred under the London
Company is, however, not of gre