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ford, Mr. Christopher Brooke (a celebrated lawyer), Mr. Edward Herbert (a celebrated lawyer), Mr. Thomas Gibbs, Mr. John Ferrar, Mr. Samuel Wrote, Mr. William Cranmer (a grand-nephew of the great Archbishop Thomas Cranmer), Mr. Berblock, and Mr. Bamford. When the commission of Nov. 28, 1618, was granted for establishing the General Assembly in Virginia, Sir Thomas Smythe was the chief officer of the Virginia Com pany of London; he was succeeded by Sir Edwin Sandys on May 8, 1619; and Sandys by Henry, Earl of Southampton (the early friend of Shakspeare), on July 8, 1620, on which day, unless the factions then obtaining in the company caused additional delay, the final report of " the select committee of choice men " on the first Acts of our first Gen eral Assembly was made to the Great and General Court of the Virginia Company then assembled; but as their report has not yet been found, it is not known which, if any, of the said Acts of our said first General As
sembly were allowed by the said select com mittee, and by the said Great and General Court of the Company to become Laws, and were as such returned under seal to Virginia. Owing to a reliance on unreliable evidence, the credit for sending to Virginia the com mission for establishing this first General Assembly has sometimes been given to the Sandys administration; but the change in the government of the London Company was not really even known in Virginia " till after Michaelmas, 1619." The first English colony established in America, from the precarious infancy thereof, through the darkest hours and the long days of turmoil and trials, to the making "good the plantation there," was largely under the management of the same men, and it was owing to a peculiar chain of unfortunate circumstances that our knowledge of these men and of their work has been derived almost entirely from the evidence of their opponents or of their critics.
A REFEREE CASE. BY FRANCIS DANA.
HPHREE goddesses, long, long ago, The poets tell us, Sat for inspection in a row Extremely jealous. You've heard it, — what the partialness Of Paris ends in, And what a pretty ten years' mess He gets his friends in.
