s and
servants, began to be more content, and to take more pleasure in
cultivating their lands. The brief interval of free trade with Holland
had enlarged the demand for tobacco, and it was cultivated more
extensively.

Sir George Yeardley's term of office having expired, the company's
council, upon the recommendation of the Earl of Southampton, appointed
Sir Francis Wyat governor, a young gentleman of Ireland, whose
education, family, fortune, and integrity, well qualified him for the
place. He arrived in October, 1621, with a fleet of nine sail, and
brought over a new frame of government constituted by the company, and
dated July the 24th, 1621, establishing a council of State and a general
assembly--vesting the governor with a negative upon the acts of the
assembly; this body to be convoked by him in general once a year, and to
consist of the council of State and of two burgesses from every town,
hundred, or plantation; the trial by jury secured; no act of the
assembly to be valid unless ratified by the company in England; and, on
the other hand, no order of the company to be obligatory upon the colony
without the consent of the assembly. This last feature displays that
spirit of constitutional freedom which then pervaded the Virginia
Company. A commission bearing the same date with the new frame of
government recognized Sir Francis Wyat as the first governor under it;
and this famous ordinance became the model of every subsequent
provincial form of government in the Anglo-American colonies.[150:A]

Wyat brought with him also a body of instructions intended for the
permanent guidance of the governor and council. He was to provide for
the service of God in conformity with the Church of England as near as
may be; to be obedient to the king, and to administer justice according
to the laws of England; not to injure the natives, and to forget old
quarrels now buried; to be industrious, and to suppress drunkenness,
gaming, and excess in clothes; not to permit any but the council and
heads of hundreds to wear gold in their clothes, or to wear silk, till
they make it themselves; not to offend any foreign prince; to punish
pirates; to build forts; to endeavor to convert the heathen; and each
town to teach some of the Indian children fit for the college which was
to be built; to cultivate corn, wine, and silk; to search for minerals,
dyes, gums, and medicinal drugs, and to draw off the people from the
excessive planting of t