GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS 33 
after the landing, the results of the colonists’ labors 
should be held in common, stored under careful super¬ 
intendence in public depots or houses of deposit. And 
this seems very nearly to have paralyzed effort; for in 
the fourth year, when Sir Thomas Dale arrived— 
May, 1611—to take charge of the Plantation, he found 
it in a sad state for want of industry. Even “those 
who were most energetic and honest by nature, were 
indolent and indifferent in the work of the field.” 
He went to work with the will that was characteris¬ 
tic of him, to find ways and means of overcoming this 
indifference; and it was to this activity on his part that 
the settlers owed their first real independent land hold¬ 
ings. These were separate gardens, assigned by con¬ 
sent and approval of the Council, to those men who had 
proven themselves of superior merit; and a large num¬ 
ber of these holdings, each amounting to three acres, 
were given out under what amounted to a lease—for 
there was a common garden for the cultivation of flax 
and hemp, wherein each was obliged to do his share of 
the labor in order to retain his three acres. 
Not until 1619, however, during the administration 
of Sir George Yeardley, did private and actual owner¬ 
ship in the land become general; at this time “one 
thousand acres were set apart for the maintenance of 
the clergy, three thousand for the support of the Gover¬ 
nor, ten thousand for the endowment of the University 
