as much as two hundred and fifty dollars in American currency, a quantity which must have been considered very large even for a nobleman.[1] The urgent request which Perkins had made of members of the Cornwallis family with reference to discarded clothes was very probably complied with on the occasion of the Second Supply.
The great difficulty which the Company, according to the account of the Spanish ambassador in London at the time, had found in securing the means for the purchase of the goods in the Second Supply, had quite probably the chief influence in creating the demand for the second charter, which was finally granted in May, 1609. Under the provisions of this charter, the fifty-six city companies of London and six hundred and fifty or more persons united themselves into a corporation of private adventurers for the advancement of the plantation. Among them, were many men of very large and many of very small fortunes. About one-third paid into the general fund thirty-seven pounds and ten shillings or more apiece; another third paid individually less than this sum, while the remainder failed to make payments at all.[2] The city companies did not contribute simply as incorporated bodies. In the records of the Grocers’ Company, there is a receipt showing that sixty-nine pounds sterling had been placed with the warden by members to be invested for their private benefit in bills of adventure in the Virginian undertaking. These sums appear to have been subscribed at regular meetings of the Company, each member being left to bind himself for whatever amount his own inclinations suggested. The names of those refusing to do so were carefully taken down. The Mercers’ Company agreed to
