t on the "Coast of
Virginia or America" within limits that reached from 34 deg. of latitude
in the south to 45 deg. in the north, which is to say from the mouth of
the Cape Fear River in lower North Carolina to a point midway through the
modern state of Maine. The Plymouth grantees had a primary interest in
the northern area that Captain John Smith would later name New England,
and there they established a colony at Sagadahoc in August 1607, only a
few weeks after the settlement of Jamestown. But the colony barely
survived the winter, and was abandoned in the spring of 1608.
Thereafter, the Plymouth adventurers gave up. In contrast, the London
adventurers persisted, and their persistence served to tie the name of
Virginia increasingly to them and to their more southerly settlement.
As a result, the London adventurers became in common usage the Virginia
adventurers, their company the Virginia Company, and their colony
Virginia.

The Virginia colony was especially fortunate in having the backing of
London. Indeed, it may not be too much to suggest that the chief
difference between the stories of Roanoke Island and of Jamestown was
the difference that London made. Consistently, the leadership of
Elizabethan adventures to North America, including those of Gilbert and
Raleigh, had come from the western counties and outports of England,
and with equal consistency hopeful projects had foundered on the
inadequacy of their financial support while London favored other
ventures--to Muscovy, to the Levant, and more recently to the East
Indies. It was not merely that London had the necessary capital and
credit for a sustained effort; it also had experience in the management
of large and distant ventures, such as those of the East India Company
over which Sir Thomas Smith presided, as he would preside through many
years over the Virginia Company. London had too the advantage of its
proximity to the seat of government in nearby Westminster, where King
James had his residence, where the highest courts of the realm sat
periodically, and where England's parliament customarily met. Already,
in 1606, it was possible to trace in the immediate environs of the
ancient City of London, itself still medieval in appearance and in the
organization of much of its life, the broad outlines of the great
metropolis that has been increasingly the focal point of England's
development as a modern state.

In thus emphasizing the importance of London to t