of this earlier age.

But it must be remembered that this Virginia was of the seventeenth, not of
the nineteenth century. And law had cruel and idiot faces as well as faces
just and wise. Hitherto the colony possessed no written statutes. The
Company now resolved to impose upon the wayward an iron restraint. It fell
to Dale to enforce the regulations known as "Lawes and Orders, dyvine,
politique, and martiall for the Colonye of Virginia"--not English civil law
simply, but laws "chiefly extracted out of the Lawes for governing the army
in the Low Countreys." The first part of this code was compiled by William
Strachey; the latter part is thought to have been the work of Sir Edward
Cecil, Sir Thomas Gates, and Dale himself, approved and accepted by the
Virginia Company. Ten years afterwards, defending itself before a Committee
of Parliament, the Company through its Treasurer declared "the necessity of
such laws, in some cases ad terrorem, and in some to be truly executed."

Seventeenth-century English law herself was terrible enough in all
conscience, but "Dale's Laws" went beyond. Offences ranged from failure to
attend church and idleness to lese majeste. The penalties were gross--cruel
whippings, imprisonments, barbarous puttings to death. The High Marshal
held the unruly down with a high hand.

But other factors than this Draconian code worked at last toward order in
this English West. Dale was no small statesman, and he played ferment
against ferment. Into Virginia now first came private ownership of land.
So much was given to each colonist, and care of this booty became to each a
preoccupation. The Company at home sent out more and more settlers, and
more and more of the industrious, peace-loving sort. By 1612 the English in
America numbered about eight hundred. Dale projected another town, and
chose for its site the great horseshoe bend in the river a few miles below