abiding and born within this our Realm of England.” This was a promise of self-government for all English colonies in America, and if England had carried it out in good faith there would not later have been the necessity of fighting the Revolutionary War; since all that the Americans demanded at the opening of that conflict was to be taxed only by their own representatives, a privilege which Englishmen in England had enjoyed for many generations.

JAMESTOWN MONUMENT

A shaft to commemorate the first permanent English settlement on American soil. Jamestown was founded May 13, 1607.

The Virginia Company, as this great corporation was called, was divided into two subcompanies, the London and the Plymouth Companies, to each of which was assigned the task of colonizing one-half the territory.

Before many weeks had passed George Popham attempted to plant a colony in the part assigned to the Plymouth Company, but it utterly failed.

The London Company, meanwhile, had fitted up three small vessels, the Godspeed, the Discovery, and the Susan Constant, placed one hundred and five colonists aboard, and sent them forth to plant a colony. They sailed from the Downs on New Year’s Day, 1607, and after a stormy voyage of almost four months dropped anchor off a pleasant point of land, to which in gratitude they gave the name “Point Comfort.”

JAMESTOWN, THE FIRST ENGLISH SETTLEMENT

As they had been warned, however, to establish this settlement far up a navigable river, out of danger from wandering vessels of the Spanish Main, they entered the beautiful river of Powhatan, which they called the James, and sailed up it for some fifty miles until they came to a wooded island, which they chose as the site of their colony. There they cut logs and built the rude huts which marked the site of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement within the limits of what we now know as the United States of America.

THE MAYFLOWER

The pilgrim ship is shown as it entered Plymouth Harbor bringing the first New England settlers.

Through sorrow and privations, surrounded by the nameless terrors of an unknown wilderness, harassed by savages, and disheartened by sickness, the little colony survived as by a miracle, and became the nucleus of a nation. Of the old Jamestown nothing now remains but an ancient church tower overgrown with ivy and a few crumbling tombstones. But its honor remains, secure in the hearts of a grateful people.

EDWARD WINSLOW

From the only portrait of a “Mayflower” pilgrim in existence. Edward Winslow was one of the governors of Plymouth colony.

The failure of the Popham colony had discouraged the Plymouth Company, and it was not until Jamestown was a flourishing village that a permanent settlement was made in the northern part of the region which King James had granted to the Virginia Company. Those years had been years of strife and sorrow in England. The king in the narrow bigotry of his ecclesiastical views, had declared that if any refused to conform to the rules of worship prescribed by the established Church of England, he would “harry them out of the land,” and King James had kept his word. Many Englishmen had been “harried out of the land,” and had taken refuge on the continent of Europe; but the band for whom history was reserving the largest place had escaped from Scrooby in Nottinghamshire and established themselves