the Boundary Line a joint resolution was adopted by
both houses of the Legislature authorizing the Committee on the Library
to print such of the papers as might be selected, provided the consent
of the Commission could be obtained. Application was made to allow the
first and second papers in this pamphlet to be printed but it was
refused. The Commission having been dissolved the Committee on the
Library have assumed the responsibility and herewith submit this
instalment of these interesting documents, which were written before the
Colony of Maryland was known, and all of which, save the first, were
never before printed.

The Report of the proceedings of the first Assembly is prefaced with the
introductory note published with Mr. Bancroft's copy, to which a few
notes explanatory have been added.

Trusting that this instalment of these historical records of the Ancient
Dominion will be acceptable to the students of our early history, and
sufficiently impress the members of the Legislature with their value to
move them to make an appropriation sufficient to print all that has been
obtained, this is

Respectfully submitted,
by your obedient servants,

THOS. H. WYNNE, }
Chm. Senate Com. on Library, }
} _Sub Committee in_
W.S. GILMAN, Charge of Library. } _Charge of Library._
Chm. House Com. on Library. }

_INTRODUCTORY NOTE._

Virginia, for twelve years after its settlement, languished under the
government of Sir Thomas Smith, Treasurer of the Virginia Company in
England. The Colony was ruled during that period by laws written in
blood; and its history shows how the narrow selfishness of despotic
power could counteract the best efforts of benevolence. The colonists
suffered an extremity of distress too horrible to be described.
In April, 1619, Sir George Yeardley arrived. Of the emigrants who had
been sent over at great cost, not one in twenty then remained alive. "In
James Citty were only those houses that Sir Thomas Gates built in the
tyme of his government, with one wherein the Governor allwayes dwelt,
and a church, built wholly at the charge of the inhabitants of that
citye, of timber, being fifty foote in length and twenty foot in
breadth." At Henrico, now Richmond, there were no more than "three old
houses, a poor ruinated Church, with some few poore buildings in the
Islande."[1] "For ministers to instruct the people, he founde only three
aut