e of intolerable
labour, bad usage and hard diet"; and admits that "at the first
settling, and for many years after, it deserved most of these
aspersions, nor were they then aspersions but truths.... There were
jails supplied, youth seduced, infamous women drilled in, the provision
all brought out of England, and that embezzled by the Trustees."

Governor Dale was a soldier; entering the army in the Netherlands as a
private he had risen to high position, and received knighthood in 1606.
Shortly after he was with Sir Thomas Gates in South Holland. The States
General in 1611 granted him three years' term of absence in Virginia.
Upon his arrival he began to put in force that system of industry and
frugality he had observed in Holland. He had all the imperiousness of a
soldier, and in an altercation with Captain Newport, occasioned by some
injurious remarks the latter made about Sir Thomas Smith, the treasurer,
he pulled his beard and threatened to hang him. Active operations for
settling new plantations were at once begun, and Dale wrote to Cecil,
the Earl of Salisbury, for 2,000 good colonists to be sent out, for the
three hundred that came were "so profane, so riotous, so full of mutiny,
that not many are Christians but in name, their bodies so diseased and
crazed that not sixty of them may be employed." He served afterwards
with credit in Holland, was made commander of the East Indian fleet in
1618, had a naval engagement with the Dutch near Bantam in 1619, and
died in 1620 from the effects of the climate. He was twice married, and
his second wife, Lady Fanny, the cousin of his first wife, survived him
and received a patent for a Virginia plantation.

Governor Dale kept steadily in view the conversion of the Indians to
Christianity, and the success of John Rolfe with Matoaka inspired
him with a desire to convert another daughter of Powhatan, of whose
exquisite perfections he had heard. He therefore despatched Ralph Hamor,
with the English boy, Thomas Savage, as interpreter, on a mission to
the court of Powhatan, "upon a message unto him, which was to deale with
him, if by any means I might procure a daughter of his, who (Pocahuntas
being already in our possession) is generally reported to be his delight
and darling, and surely he esteemed her as his owne Soule, for surer
pledge of peace." This visit Hamor relates with great naivete.

At his town of Matchcot, near the head of York River, Powhatan
himself received his v