eft in the settlement. By
1636 the adventurers had sold their claims to London merchants. In the
case of Martin's Hundred located about seven miles from Jamestown, the
massacre doomed the active settlement and only the title to the land
continued. Eventually the title to this hundred was withdrawn to permit
natural expansion of the colony, and the associates or adventurers were
awarded claims to land allotments commensurate with the number of shares
held in the joint stock.

The tracts known as company land were maintained for a while under royal
control. The role of the public estate, however, never assumed great
significance, yet there is evidence of the continued practice during the
seventeenth century of endowing an office such as Governor or secretary
with the proceeds of a land grant.

Theoretically tenants and contract laborers who were still alive at the
time of the dissolution of the company were to continue their labor
either on the public land or on private associations. In practice,
however, it is likely that lax enforcement of the contracts resulted in
a substantial diminution of the obligations of many workers. The
scarcity of records for this period makes it impossible to trace all of
this group, but there is enough evidence to indicate that some continued
to serve out their term of labor. The General Court in 1627 expressed
concern about the approaching expiration of leases and indentures of
persons for whom there were no provisions for lands; and action was
taken to permit them to lease land for a period of ten to twenty-one
years in return for which they were to render a stipulated amount of
tobacco or corn for each acre, usually one pound of tobacco per acre.
This lenient provision notwithstanding, only about sixty persons availed
themselves of the opportunity, the remainder presumably either squatting
on frontier land, working as laborers, or eventually obtaining title to
land by purchase from an original patentee.

With the dissolution of the company the issuing of land patents
continued in the hands of the Governor and Council. The King and Privy
Council assumed power over land distribution but apparently left the
issuing of patents as it had been before. Up until January, 1625,
Governor Wyatt issued patents in the name of the company. At that time
news reached Virginia that the writ of _quo warranto_ of June, 1624,
had dissolved the company and that King James I upon assumption of
control of th