The first English colony, Virginia, was planted in 1608 by a
trading company organised for the purpose, whose subscribers
included nearly all the London City Companies, and about seven
hundred private individuals of all ranks. Their motives were
partly political ('to put a bit in the ancient enemy's (Spain's)
mouth'), and partly commercial, for they hoped to find gold, and
to render England independent of the marine supplies which came
from the Baltic. But profit was not their sole aim; they were
moved also by the desire to plant a new England beyond the seas.
They made, in fact, no profits; but they did create a branch of
the English stock, and the young squires' and yeomen's sons who
formed the backbone of the colony showed themselves to be
Englishmen by their unwillingness to submit to an uncontrolled
direction of their affairs. In 1619, acting on instructions
received from England, the company's governor summoned an assembly
of representatives, one from each township, to consult on the
needs of the colony. This was the first representative body that
had ever existed outside Europe, and it indicated what was to be
the character of English colonisation. Henceforth the normal
English method of governing a colony was through a governor and an
executive council appointed by the Crown or its delegate, and a
representative assembly, which wielded full control over local
legislation and taxation. 'Our present happiness,' said the
Virginian Assembly in 1640, 'is exemplified by the freedom of
annual assemblies and by legal trials by juries in all civil and
criminal causes.'

The second group of English colonies, those of New England, far to
the north of Virginia, reproduced in an intensified form this note
of self-government. Founded in the years following 1620, these