him, and send him away. The
"great man" being terrified, the lady taking him by the hand, resolutely
stood forth in his defence, and pledged her whole property, as a
guarantee, that no harm to the settlement was intended, or was likely to
arise from the Indian's alliance. Upon Yeardley's return from Maryland,
he dispatched, with his brother's assistance, a boat with six men, one
being a carpenter, to build the great man an English house; and two
hundred pounds for the purchase of Indian territory. The terms of the
purchase were soon agreed upon, and Yeardley's people "paid for three
great rivers and also all such others as they should like of,
southerly." In due form they took possession of the country in the name
of the Commonwealth of England, receiving as a symbol of its surrender,
a turf of earth with an arrow shot into it. The territory thus given up
by the Indians was a considerable part of what afterwards became the
province of North Carolina. As soon as the natives had withdrawn from it
to a region farther south, Yeardley built the great commander a handsome
house, which he promised to fit up with English utensils and furniture.

Yeardley's people were introduced to the chief of the Tuscaroras, who
received them courteously, and invited them to visit his country, of
which he gave an attractive account; but his offer could not be
accepted, owing to the illness of their interpreter. Upon the
completion of his house, the Roanoke chief came, with the Tuscarora
chief and forty-five others, to Yeardley's house, presented his wife and
son and himself for baptism, and offered again the same symbol of the
surrender of his whole country to Yeardley; and he in his turn tendering
the same to the Commonwealth of England, prayed only "that his own
property and pains might not be forgotten." The Indian child was
presented to the minister before the congregation, and having been
baptized in their presence, was left with Yeardley to be bred a
Christian, "which God grant him grace (he prays) to become." The charges
incurred by Yeardley in purchasing and taking possession of the country,
had already amounted to three hundred pounds.[228:A]

At the meeting of the assembly in November, 1654, William Hatcher being
convicted of having stigmatized Colonel Edward Hill, speaker of the
house, as an atheist and blasphemer, (from which charges he had been
before acquitted by the quarterly court,) was compelled to make
acknowledgment of hi