322 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
a new lease for twenty-one years beyond that, for £5,000, which 
however he was informed was a great deal too much. 
The compass which Sir Francis Drake set up on the Hoe in 
1582 was removed, and re-erected at a cost of £2 10s., in 1675-6. 
Elsewhere I find mention of its having a vane, and it was, I take 
it, simply a landmark. 
All things considered, it is thus questionable whether as a port 
Plymouth made much progress during the seventeenth century. 
There was some trade to the East Indies even in the later days of 
Elizabeth, and in 1621 Sir Ferdinando Gorges was building a ship 
of a new fashion, which he hoped would outsail the Dutch. 
Gorges was one of the chief promoters of the once famous Ply- 
mouth Company, which designed to do great things in the coloni- 
zation of New England, but somehow utterly failed of success. 
It was in 1606 that James I. granted charters to two companies 
for the colonization of Virginia, Raleigh’s name for the colony he 
attempted to found in North America, and then applied to the 
greater part of the Atlantic coast of that country. To the Ply- 
mouth Company, which consisted of knights, gentlemen, and 
merchants of the West of England, exclusive privileges were 
granted over the seaboard and back country extending from the 
41st to the 45th degree of N. latitude. The charter was simply 
for commercial purposes; and among the chief promoters of this 
new development of western trade were Sir John Popham (Lord 
Chief Justice), Sir Ferdinando Gorges aforesaid (sometime Governor 
of the Fort and Island of Plymouth, and of the old family of the 
Gorges of St. Budeaux), Edward Maria Wingfield, Robert Hunt, 
Bartholomew Gosnold, and the famous Captain John Smith, whose 
rescue by Pocahontas is the most romantic episode of early English 
intercourse with the Indian tribes. The first vessel sent out was 
taken by the Spaniards; the second brought home so favourable 
an account, that in 1607 a colonizing expedition, 100 strong, under 
George Popham, was despatched, and established a settlement near 
the mouth of the Kennebec. But the ensuing winter was a hard 
one, and what with the climate and what with the Indians, the 
attempt failed, and such of the colonists as were left returned 
home in the following year. Practically this is all the Plymouth 
Company ever did; and in the next year we find the London 
Company writing to the Corporation of Plymouth—“ nothing 
doubting that this one ill success hath quenched your affection for 
