nce, on pain of a year's slavery; absence
from church on Sundays or holidays, was punished by confinement for the
night and one week's slavery to the colony; for the second offence the
offender should be a slave for a month; and for the third, for a year
and a day. Several of these regulations were highly judicious, but the
penalties of some of them were excessive and barbarous, and the vigorous
enforcement of these, and his oppressive proceedings, rendered Argall
odious to the colony, and a report of his tyranny and extortions having
reached England, Sir Thomas Smith, Alderman Johnson, deputy treasurer,
Sir Lionel Cranfield, and others of the council, addressed a letter
dated August 23, 1618, to him, in which they recapitulated a series of
charges against him of dishonesty, corruption, and oppression. At the
same time a letter, of the same purport, was written to Lord Delaware,
and he was told, that such was the indignation felt by the stockholders
in the Virginia Company against Argall that they could hardly be
restrained from going to the king, although on a distant progress, and
procuring his majesty's command for recalling him as a malefactor. The
letter contained further instructions to Lord Delaware to seize upon all
the goods and property in Argall's possession. These letters, by Lord
Delaware's death, fell into Argall's hands, and finding his sand running
low, he determined to make the best of his remaining time, and so he
multiplied his exactions, and grew more tyrannical than ever. The case
of Edward Brewster was a remarkable instance of this. A person of good
repute in the colony, he had the management of Lord Delaware's estate.
Argall, without any rightful authority, removed the servants from his
lordship's land, and employed them on his own. Brewster endeavored to
make them return, and upon this being flatly refused by one of them,
threatened him with the consequences of his contumacy. Brewster was
immediately arrested by Argall's order, charged with sedition and
mutiny, and condemned to death by a court-martial. The members of the
court, however, and some of the clergy, shocked at such a conviction,
interceded earnestly for his pardon, and Argall reluctantly granted it
on condition that Brewster should depart from Virginia, with an oath
never to return, and never to say or do anything to the disparagement of
the deputy governor. Brewster, nevertheless, upon his return to England,
discarding the obligation o