, the Virginia Council, discouraged by so many disasters
and disappointments, were at a loss to decide whether they should use
any further efforts to sustain the ill-fated colony, or should abandon
the enterprise, and recall the settlers from Virginia. But Sir Thomas
Gates made so strenuous an appeal in favor of sustaining the plantation,
that Sir Thomas Dale was dispatched with three vessels, cattle, hogs,
and other supplies. The title given to Dale was that of High Marshal of
Virginia, indicative of the martial authority with which he was
invested. He was a military man, and had served in the Low Countries,
and he brought over with him an extraordinary code of "laws divine,
moral, and martial," compiled by William Strachey, secretary of the
colony, for Sir Thomas Smith, from the military laws observed during the
wars in the Low Countries. This code was sent over by Sir Thomas Smith,
treasurer or governor of the Virginia Company, without the company's
sanction, as it has been alleged; but since the company in no way
interposed its authority in contravention to the new code, their
sanction of it may be presumed. Several of these laws were barbarous,
inhuman, written in blood.

Arriving in Virginia in the month of May, 1611, Dale touched at
Kiquotan, and set all hands there to planting corn. Reaching Jamestown
on the tenth of May, he found the settlers busily engaged in their usual
occupation, playing at bowls in the streets. He set them to work felling
trees, repairing houses, and providing materials for enclosing the new
town, which he proposed to build. To find a site for it he surveyed the
Nansemond River and the James as far as the falls, and finally pitched
upon a high ground, with steep banks, on the north side of the river,
near Arrohattock, and about twelve miles below the falls of the river.
The site was on a peninsula, known as Farrar's Island, in Varina Neck.
Sir Thomas was prevented for a time from founding the new town by the
disturbances that prevailed in the colony, and to restore order he
enforced martial law with rigor. Eight of the colonists appear to have
been convicted of treasonable plots and conspiracies, and executed by
cruel and unusual modes, before midsummer. Among these was Jeffrey
Abbot, who had served long in the army in Ireland and in the
Netherlands; had been a sergeant of Captain John Smith's company in
Virginia, who avers that he never knew there a better soldier or more
loyal friend of