firmness of Capt John Smith, was enabled to maintain its ground, and
in time, show evident signs of prosperity. The jealousy of arbitrary
power, and impatience of liberty among the new settlers, induced Lord
Delaware, Governor of Virginia in 1619, to reinstate them in the full
possession of the rights of Englishmen; and he accordingly convoked a
Provincial Assembly, the _first_ ever held in America. The
deliberations and laws of this infant Legislature were transmitted to
England for approval, and so wise and judicious were these, that the
company under whose auspices they were acting, soon after confirmed
and ratified the groundwork of what gradually ripened into the
_American representative system_. The guarantee of political rights
led to a rapid colonization. Men were now willing to regard Virginia
as their home. "They fell to building houses and planting corn." Women
were induced to leave the parent country to become the wives of
adventurous planters; and during the space of three years thirty-five
hundred persons of both sexes, found their way to Virginia. By various
modifications of their charter, the colonists, in a few years,
obtained nearly all the civil rights and privileges which they could
claim as British subjects; but the church of England was "coeval with
the settlement of Jamestown, and seems to have been considered from
the beginning as the established religion." At what time settlements
were first permanently made within the present limits of North
Carolina, has not been clearly ascertained. In 1622, the Secretary of
the colony of Virginia traveled overland to Chowan River, and
described, in glowing terms, the fertility of the soil, the salubrity
of the climate, and the kindness of the natives. In 1643, a company
obtained permission of the Virginia Legislature to prosecute
discoveries on the great river South of the Appomatox of which they
had heard, under a monopoly of the profits for fourteen years, but
with what measure of success has not been recorded. These early