England, for
violating the navigation act; and the proceeds, amounting to four
hundred pounds sterling, were given to Colonel Samuel Matthews, agent
for Virginia at the court of the Protector, Colonel William Clayborne,
secretary, and other officers, in return for their services in the
matter of the forfeited ship.

Captain Francis Yeardley, who has been mentioned before, was a son of
Sir George Yeardley, some time governor of Virginia, and Lady
Temperance, his wife, and was born in Virginia. A letter dated in May,
1654, was addressed by him to John Ferrar, at Little Gidding, in
Huntingdonshire, brother to Nicholas Ferrar, whose name is so honorably
connected with the early annals of Virginia. The younger Yeardley
describes the country as very fertile, flourishing in all the exuberance
of nature, abounding especially in the rich mulberry and vine, with a
serene air and temperate clime, and rich in precious minerals. A young
man engaged in the beaver trade having been accidentally separated from
his own sloop, had obtained a small boat and provisions from Yeardley,
and had gone with his party to Roanoke, at which island he hoped to find
his vessel. He there fell in with a hunting party of Indians, and
persuaded them and some of the other tribes, both in the island and on
the mainland, to go back with him and make peace with the English. He
brought some of these Indians with the great man, or chief of Roanoke,
to Yeardley's house, which was probably on the Eastern Shore, where his
father had lived before him. The Indians passed a week at Yeardley's.
While there, the "great man" observing Yeardley's children reading and
writing, inquired of him whether he would take his only son, and teach
him "to speak out of the book, and make a writing." Yeardley assured him
that he would willingly do so; and the chief at his departure expressing
his strong desire to serve the God of the Englishmen, and his hope that
his child might be brought up in the knowledge of the same, promised to
bring him back again in four months. In the mean time Yeardley had been
called away to Maryland; and the planters of the Eastern Shore
suspecting, from the frequent visits and inquiries of the Indian, that
Yeardley was carrying on some scheme for his own private advantage, were
disposed to maltreat the chief. Upon one occasion, when Yeardley's wife
had brought him to church with her, some over-busy justices of the
peace, after sermon, threatened to whip