A STATEN ISLAND INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 
The strength of the Virginia Party had previously been devel- 
oped in the appointment but a short time before of George Yeard- 
ley as Governor of Virginia. He was a’‘man of humble birth, the 
son of a merchant tailor and the brother of an apothecary. But 
he had made a good record in Virginia, whither he had gone in 
1610, and when, in 1618, he “was,” according to John Pory, “at 
his late being in London, together with his lady, out of his mere 
gettings here (Va.), able to disburse very near three thousand ° 
pounds to furnish him with the voyage’’; he, “who at the first 
coming, besides a great deal of worth in his person, brought only 
his sword with him”; his success and services drew such attention 
to him that he was elected governor, and James, to make him 
worthy of the honor, thereupon touched Yeardley upon his shoul- 
der with a sword and he became a knight. 
So in January 1619 the new governor sailed for Virginia, where 
he landed at Jamestown on April roth, just nine days before the 
election of Sandys, the greatest statesman of the company and one 
of the ablest and best friends the colony ever had. 
At this time there were about 1,000 persons in the colony, but 
-such was the quickening effect of the new order of things, in the 
course of the next year there were sent and sending about 1,200, 
or more than the whole population after twelve years of the former 
rule. And in the next fifteen years, in spite of the massacre of 
1622, the figures reached 4,914. | 
The new governor found on his arrival at Jamestown “only 
those houses that Sir Thomas Gates built in the tyme of his goyv- 
ernment, with one wherein the Governor always dwelt, and a 
church built wholly at the charge of the inhabitants of that Citye, 
of timber being fifty foote in length and twenty foote in breadth.” 
At “ Henrico three old houses, a poor ruinated church, with some 
few poore buildings in the Islande. For ministers to instruct the 
people, he founde only three authorized, two others who never 
received orders.” 
While the colonists were generally able to earn little more than 
a livelihood at this period, yet John Pory, secretary under Yeard- 
