f an oath extorted under duress, appealed to
the Company against the tyranny of the deputy governor, and the inhuman
sentence was reversed. John Rolfe, a friend of Argall, made light of the
affair.[128:A]

During this year, 1618, a ship called the Treasurer was sent out from
England by Lord Rich, who had now become Earl of Warwick, a person of
great note afterwards in the civil wars, and commander of the fleet
against the king. This ship was manned with recruits from the colony,
and dispatched on a semi-piratical cruise in the West Indies, where she
committed some depredations on the Spanish possessions.

Upon receiving intelligence of the death of Lord Delaware, the Virginia
Company appointed Captain George Yeardley, who was knighted upon this
occasion, Governor and Captain-General of Virginia. Before his arrival
in the colony Argall embarked for England, in a vessel laden with his
effects, and being a relation of Sir Thomas Smith, and a partner in
trade of the profligate Earl of Warwick, he escaped with impunity. In
1620 Argall commanded a ship-of-war in an expedition fitted out against
the Algerines, and in 1623 was knighted by King James. Argall's
character has been variously represented; he appears to have been an
expert mariner of talents, courage, enterprise, and energy, but selfish,
avaricious, unscrupulous, arbitrary and cruel.

In April, 1618, Powhatan died, being upwards of seventy years of age. He
was, perhaps, so called from one of his places of residence;[129:A] he
was also sometimes styled Ottaniack, and sometimes Mamanatowick,[129:B]
but his proper name was Wahunsonacock. The country subject to him was
called Powhatan, as was likewise the chief river, and his subjects were
called Powhatans. His hereditary domain consisted only of Powhatan,
Arrohattox, Appamatuck, Youghtanund, Pamunkey, and Matapony, together
with Werowocomoco and Kiskiack. All the rest were his conquests, and
they consisted of the country on the James River and its branches, from
its mouth to the falls, and thence across the country to the north,
nearly as high as the falls of all the great rivers over the Potomac, as
far as to the Patuxent in Maryland. Some nations on the Eastern Shore
also owned subjection to this mighty werowance. In each of his several
hereditary dominions he had houses built like arbors, thirty or forty
feet long, and whenever he was about to visit one of these, it was
supplied beforehand with provision for his en