ed for peace, and two days after Newport weighed anchor, leaving
at Jamestown one hundred settlers, with provisions sufficient, as was
supposed, for more than three months.[43:A]

Not long after his departure a fatal sickness began to prevail at
Jamestown, engendered by the insalubrity of the place, the exposure of
the settlers, and the scarcity and bad quality of their food. Hitherto
they had procured provisions from the vessels, but now, for some time,
the daily allowance of each man was a pint of damaged wheat or barley.
"Our drink was water, and our lodgings castles in the air." By September
fifty of them, being one-half of the colony, died; the rest made out to
subsist upon sturgeon and crabs. Among the victims of disease was
Bartholomew Gosnold, the projector of the expedition, whose name is well
worthy to be ranked with Smith and Raleigh. The sick, during this
calamitous season, received the faithful attentions of Thomas Wotton,
surgeon-general.

Wingfield, the president, after engrossing, as it was alleged, the
public store of provisions to his own use, attempted to escape from the
colony in the pinnace, and return to England. This baseness roused the
indignation even of the emaciated survivors, and they deposed him, and
appointed Captain John Ratcliffe in his place, and displaced Kendall, a
confederate of Wingfield, from the council.

In a manuscript journal of these early incidents, written by Wingfield
himself, and preserved in the Lambeth Library, he undertakes to
exculpate himself from the charge of engrossing the common store in the
following terms: "As I understand, by report, I am much charged with
starving the colony; I did always give every man his allowance
faithfully, both of corn, oil, aquavitae, etc., as was by the council
proportioned; neither was it bettered after my time, until toward the
end of March a biscuit was allowed to every workingman for his
breakfast, by means of the provision brought us by Captain Newport, as
will appear hereafter. It is further said I did much banquet and riot; I
never had but one squirrel roasted, whereof I gave a part to Mr.
Ratcliffe, then sick; yet was that squirrel given me. I did never heat a
flesh-pot but when the common-pot was so used likewise; yet how often
Mr. Presidents and the councillors have, night and day, been endangered
to break their backs, so laden with swans, geese, ducks, etc. How many
times their flesh-pots have swelled, many hungry eyes did