This is an account of the English adventurers whose ambitions gave shape to the settlement at Jamestown and helped to see the colony through the many tribulations of its first eighteen years. Professor Craven's treatise touches on all aspects of the Virginia Company's existence: the organization of the Company, changes in the Charter, factions and rivalries within the organization, principal sailings, problems of settlement, and the causes of the Company's demise. This is must reading for all students of early Virginia history and genealogy.