ouncil prayed "that the governors may not have
absolute power, that they might still retain the liberty of popular
assemblies, than which nothing could more conduce to the public
satisfaction and public utility." At the same time the Virginia Company,
in England, presented a petition to the House of Commons against the
arbitrary proceedings of the king; but although favorably received, it
was withdrawn as soon as the king's disapprobation was announced.

In Virginia the commissioners refused to exhibit their commission and
instructions, and the Assembly therefore refused to give them access to
their records. Pory, one of the commissioners, who had formerly lost his
place of secretary of the colony by betraying its secrets to the Earl of
Warwick, suborned Edward Sharpless, clerk of the council, to expose to
him copies of the journal of that body, and of the House of Burgesses.
Sharpless being convicted of this misdemeanor was sentenced to the
pillory, with the loss of his ears.[173:B] Only a part of one ear was
actually cut off.

The commissioners, having failed to obtain from the Assembly a
declaration of their willingness to submit to the king's purpose of
revoking the charter, made a report against the company's management of
the colony and the government of it, as too popular, that is,
democratic, under the present charter. The king, by a proclamation
issued in July, suppressed the meetings of the company, and ordered for
the present a committee of the privy council, and others, to sit every
Thursday, at the house of Sir Thomas Smith, in Philpot Lane, for
conducting the affairs of the colony. Viscount Mandeville was at the
head of this committee: Sir George Calvert, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Sir
Samuel Argall, John Pory, Sir John Wolstenholme, and others, were
members. At the instance of the attorney-general, to enable the company
to make a defence, their books were restored and the deputy treasurer
released. In Trinity term, 1624, the writ of _quo warranto_ was tried
in the Court of King's Bench, and the charter of the Virginia Company
was annulled. The case was determined only upon a technicality in the
pleadings.

In one of the hearings against the company, before the privy council,
the Marquis of Hamilton said of the letters and instructions of the
company, written by Nicholas Ferrar, Jr.: "They are papers as admirably
well penned as any I ever heard." And the Earl of Pembroke remarked:
"They all deserve the high